Magazine #9 of the Federal Cultural Foundation / Kulturstiftung des Bundes

The German Federal Cultural Foundation never shrinks away from representing or supporting controversial positions. In fact, its focus on several thematic areas in the field of contemporary art and culture has required a readiness to challenge popular opinion and initiate debate. However, the projects in this issue are an exception to the rule as no one could raise serious objection to them, though they would have never left the drawing board without a bit of help. A former German president once claimed that our society needed a ‹jolt›. In view of the unarguably dreadful situation of cultural education in Germany, such a ‹jolt› could be created by a project to teach 200,000 children how to play a musical instrument in the coming years. And though the efforts will be focused on the Ruhr region as the European Capital of Culture 2010, we hope the project will have long-lasting effects that go far beyond the borders of the Ruhr region. If we do not convey cultural achievements and skills to younger generations, and if we do not enable them to foster and continue this heritage through their own efforts, the debate concerning how to preserve our historic cultural institutions could soon be pointless [ p. 4 ] . >>> In light of a dynamically expanding entertainment and event industry which is constantly encroaching on the activities of cultural institutions like theatres and museums, our loss of cultural competence is not the only danger facing art and culture. The artworks themselves are at risk of being lost forever. Only recently has the public become aware that century-old and modern works of art are in poor condition and require immediate restoration measures. Armin Zweite presents several impressive examples of contemporary art that do not only illustrate the current situation from an expert’s point of view. He also addresses the ‹ethical› problem of restor ing contemporary artworks whose short lifespans seem to have been intended by the artists [ p. 9 ] . With its Programme to Preserve and Restore Mobile Cultural Assets, the Federal Cultural Foundation hopes to increase public awareness about this problem and help find new ways of solving it. >>> Art enthusiasts have paid relatively little attention to the cultural heritage preserved in museums and collections of natural history. With his project Journey to the Interior, Hanns Zischler attempts to integrate these treasures of natural history into an interactive medium that takes the public on exciting new journeys into the secret world of museum storerooms [ p 3 7 ] . >>> All the drawings by Maciej Sienczyk in this issue were created as part of the German-Polish cultural projects organized by Büro Kopernikus. They illustrate the world of Polish Miracles — a compilation of articles by German and Polish writers. We have provided a selection of humorous examples on pages 27 31. >>> This issue also includes two new literary pieces by Wilhelm Genazino and Kathrin Röggla who were asked by the Federal Cultural Foundation and the Suhrkamp Verlag to describe their visions of the Future of Labour [ p. 12 ] . Nikola Richter, who is per sonally familiar with society’s ‹precariat›, investigates what young people think about the future of labour and how they’ve expressed their ideas in cultural projects on p. 19. >>> In contrast to Wolfgang Reinhard’s article in our last issue, the well-known philosopher Otfried Höffe is quite optimistic regarding the chances of shaping a European community of values — the topic of a conference organized by the Federal Cultural Foundation [ p. 23 ] . Emir Imamovi ´ c’s report on the erection of a monument in downtown Sarajevo demonstrates how difficult such an undertaking can be, and more importantly, how precious cultural education is in a democratic society.

Hortensia Völckers, Alexander Farenholtz [ Executive Board of the Federal Cultural Foundation ]

by hortensia volckers

an instrument

change through culture — Culture through change. Essen and the entire Ruhr region, with its 53 cities and communities, used this motto for its successful bid to become the European Capital of Culture 2010 — a title it will share with the Hungarian city of Pécs and Istanbul. The cultural ‹beacons› of the Ruhr region — theatres, museums, the Ruhrfestpiele, Triennial, Short Film Days, Zeche Zollverein, count less major and fringe events, socio-cultural projects and multi-cul tural institutions — will soon undergo explosive growth, heralding the decline of the old Ruhr region, demonstrating the struggle and splendour of its transformation and presenting its plans and visions for the future.

A capital of culture? Is this hype really necessary, sceptics ask. Don’t we already have enough spectacles, festivals, glitzy events and long mu seum nights? Do we really need more subterranean adventure land scapes, floating cultural islands and coalmines converted into concert halls and art studios? When the show ends, what will remain behind, what will continue to strengthen culture in the long term? Let me re spond with a dream:

One summer day in 2010, the Ruhr region’s largest football stadium will be packed with students from the first four grades of primary school. Every last seat will be taken, the playing field will be filled with people. Parents and local dignitaries will have a hard time squeezing in be tween the masses of children sitting on the bleachers, the stairs, in the aisles. Opening their canvas bags and instrument cases, they will then perform the premiere of a piece they had prepared for three years. A rhapsody for 200,000 children, a melange of etudes and improvi sation, a demonstration of what they learned from talented, imagi native teachers in three years of music classes. A suite of etudes and improvisation based on the world of childhood experience — songs sung to them by their grandparents who came from Italy, Spain, Kurdistan, Anatolia, or who immigrated to the mining cities from Galicia more than a century ago. Also the popular music of today, radio schmaltz and immigrant a cappella, Turk rock and classical snatches, Shakira and Grönemeyer, the latest teen rap and the rock’n roll their parents grew up with. The songs they sang together in pre school and the strange melodies they invented themselves. Along with these, they will chirp, whistle, rattle and sing the sounds of their daily lives — the honeyed violins in the TV commercials, the rising cheer of a football game, traffic noises, cartoon sounds, music they hear from the apartment next door, police sirens, rumbling machines demolishing the last factory in their neighbourhood, shouts on the playground, ship whistles on the river port, shopping mall Muzak, plopping tennis balls and screeching tram wheels, the subtle hum of a church organ and the calls to prayer from the mosques. All of this mixed together into a collage of sound based on traditions, classical and pop music, order and chaos. It will truly be a concert like no other, a gigantic fète de la musique, an event that will continue to resonate in the region for a long time, as the preparation alone will have taken three whole years.

This is a dream, my dream, but it could turn out differently. The two hundred thousand children might decide to perform at all the public spaces and parks in the Ruhr region, thousands of small groups, per forming their piece on one day at the same moment, or perhaps over a period of days, self-organized and decentralized. Nothing is set in stone. They can decide for themselves.

The dream has become a project — and is almost fully financed. An in strument for every child in the Ruhr region — an undertaking so im mense that most people can’t believe their ears when they first hear about it. Not only because of the 50 million euros the project will cost in the end. This project has already created logistic, legal and educa tional problems which pose a serious challenge to cultural agencies, primary schools and music schools. Where are they supposed to find that many qualified music teachers? Who is going to convince parents from so-called ‹educationally weak› social classes that their small monthly contribution to this project is well-invested? How can we expand the range of instruments to include the foreign sounds famil iar to the immigrant population? How do we gain the support of school directors who are faced with even more organizational prob lems and how can we motivate teachers to spend extra time during their day to work with trained instrumentalists from the music schools? Do we need to launch a promotional campaign for the par ents and neighbours who will have to endure the musical mania of their children’s trumpeting, horn-blowing and fiddling for three years — and hopefully longer?

My dream of a musical ‹social sculpture› stretching across an entire re gion would have dissolved into a series of smaller nightmares had we not known it was indeed possible. For this dream has a history. It be gan five years ago when Manfred Grunenberg, the director of the Bochum Music School, walked into the meeting room at the ‹Foun dation for the Future of Education›, a project established by the ‹Community Bank for Loans and Gifts› (GLS ) which is one of the pi oneers of ethical-ecological banking in Germany. He was trying to collect a half million euros for the project An Instrument for Every Child, which, as he put it, was «a counterpart to the Deutsche Tele

kom’s plan to provide all primary school children access to a compu ter by 2006». In cooperation with the city’s music schools, Grunen berg hoped to offer all children in primary and special schools the op portunity to learn an instrument of their choice. He was able to secure the half million euros. Bochum, though strapped for cash as all Ger man cities are, agreed to fund the expansion of the music schools, and since then, the musical network has been rapidly expanding thanks to a coalition comprised of municipal agencies, the Foundation for the Future (which purchased all the instruments with the proceeds acquired from the sale of privately donated Stradivari), the children’s families who contribute 15 or 25 euros per month, and last but not least, the primary school teachers who participate in the first intro ductory year of musical instruction. The cooperation between gov ernmental institutions and the citizens functions well, yet anyone who has been involved in a similar project knows how difficult, time-con suming, and potentially conflict-ridden such constructions can be. But the network is stable and growing.

And now the plan is to expand the network across the entire Ruhr region. How did this come about? Let me at least tell my part of the story. Last spring between March and June, my colleague Antonia Lahmé and I made several reconnaissance trips to the Ruhr region. We wanted to find out if the Federal Cultural Foundation could contribute any thing worthwhile to the ‹Ruhr Cultural Capital 2010›. We met with cultural department heads who had dreamed of a ‹systematic ap proach to cultural education› for years and spent their time after work singing in a choir. We drove through Essen-Katernberg in a police car, not because it was dangerous, but because the officer who was assigned the area knew all the kids by name, even those whose names were difficult to pronounce. We walked through closed coal mining areas decorated with modern artworks and listened to the quips of a nostalgic taxi driver who described it as «artificial respiration» for a place he and his colleagues used to work, suffer and live. We stum bled across disputes of professional competence while walking down the linoleum-lined corridors of a brick Gothic cultural affairs depart ment. At the university, we learned that 800 children from 46 nations receive free instruction from students. Beneath the obsolete winding towers at the Carl Mines, we met with a pastor who grew up next to the windmills along the Lower Rhine. For the last twenty five years, he had devoted his life to looking for work for young people — and had no intention of stopping anytime soon. We spoke with a school director who hoped to instil a ‹new religiousness› in children. Togeth er with theatre directors, he now cooperates with volunteer street workers to get kids off the street and develop a secular, theatrical ‹Canon for City Inhabitants›. At the Philharmonic Orchestra in Essen, we sat among nervous parents whose children — Italians, Russians, Turks, Germans — could find their way through the back stage labyrinth with their eyes closed. We visited a reconstructed min ing floor at the mining museum and went to a street in DuisburgMarxloh, where one can find everything one needs for a Turkish wed ding and where a handful of extremely active women have collected enough money to fund the construction of Germany’s largest mosque. Standing in front of a half-constructed glass palace in Duisburg, we asked ourselves whether this city was the right place for ‹Germany’s largest casino›. And sitting on a plastic sofa in an old roundhouse, we were told that the architecture in Mülheim was as mixed as its pop ulation. That was why it was so difficult to develop a cultural pro gramme that appealed to everyone.

We spoke to approximately 200 people during our search for a project. And somewhere along the way, we fell in love with the Ruhr region — a place still attached to so many clichés. We loved the jumble of drab cities with the remnants of their industrial past, the green islands of the cities to the south with their new middle-class joggers and the run down quarters in the northern cities with their quaint sayings (I think my fontanel’s gonna pop!), the patchwork garden communities and the kiosks on every other street corner, the warm-hearted frankness at the counters. But above all, we were impressed with the diversity of the civil interest groups, foundations and community centres which were established in more prosperous times and have survived the hard times thanks to the tremendous dedication of many. We found out what this country of complainers is constantly demanding. Excel lence. We found it in schools where 80 percent of the students have an immigrant background, all of whom speak excellent German. We encountered it in libraries equipped with the most modern techno logy and run by friendly and helpful staff. We recognized it in thea tre and orchestra directors who were dedicated to their art, felt privi leged to do what they do, and saw it as their duty to «give something back».

This is when we came across An Instrument for Every Child in Bochum with its amazingly well-functioning cooperation between the city and its citizens, patrons and musicians, a model of collaboration that con tinually generates long-term renewal. An Instrument for Every Child in the entire Ruhr region — it would be an impossible undertaking without cooperation. It could only be realized with political focus and the necessary funding, the cooperation of schools and municipal pol iticians, as well as the support of state agencies and sponsors. Accord

for every child

ing to its statutes, the aim of the Foundation is to support and initiate innovative artistic and cultural projects, at best, in an international context. But is it the task of a national cultural foundation to devote itself to the musical literacy of a region? Nobody thought of this when the Foundation was being planned. Strange — or perhaps not. Every one knows that the great cultural traditions and ‹national treasures›, the cultural beacons that shine far beyond our own borders — the Theatertreffen, the documenta, the music festivals — and the many institutions and places which carry the ‹World Cultural Heritage› logo are useless if we don’t support the legatees, if the beacons don’t shine beyond the suburbs, if we don’t continually ‹re-mould› our treasures to fit the times. We’ve heard it said again and again — cul ture is the place where we talk about, describe, sing and surmount the barriers of the world we live in. Culture is the place we ask the ques tion ‹how do we want to live together?› — a question discussed and decided on by politicians, and ideally, with everyone. However, in order to participate in this discussion about society and its potential, we as a society have to learn to speak the language — the public and political language and also the language of the arts.

Perhaps this is the most extensive and costly innovation we have to sup port — working on the aesthetic ‹basics›. The Federal Cultural Foun dation has already taken steps in this direction with a wide range of smaller and large projects, including the Dance Plan Germany (in cooperation with community, state and federal institutions) and the New Music Network. Even with the ‹PISA shock›, Rütli Oath and the Rhythm is it! euphoria behind us, we still have a long way to go to en sure that all children in Germany are integrated into our fractured, multi-dimensional, national and globalised culture, that they are aesthetically educated to the point that they know what’s coming out of their iPods and PC s, that they can analyse and evaluate the sym bols being used to influence them, that they know how the sounds, images and stories they encounter in their daily lives are produced, and that they learn how to produce them themselves. Zoltan Kodály, the founder of Hungary’s great kindergarten and school music tradi tion, once claimed «Not being musically inclined is something you learn«. And indeed, it takes tremendous effort to prevent children — and adults — from singing, from wanting to learn how to play an in strument, from using their imaginations and creating something with others instead of playing Second Life all by themselves.

We teach our children to read and write so they can express their will and communicate with others. We teach them mathematics and sci ence so they can understand and shape the world. No one questions this, people call for optimisation and politicians attempt to follow through. However, musicians, painters, writers, cultural policy-mak ers and parents have to constantly provide reasons why aesthetic edu cation is important to our children. Do we always have to justify what we know — from Book III of the Politeia, Rousseau, and the reform pedagogues of the 1920s and1970s — that culture and art are elements of public life, as indispensable as politics, economy and architecture? Do cultural policy-makers have to defend what has been common knowledge since biblical times? According to the book of Genesis, the first city required four professions: a developer, peasant, forger and singer. Apart from bearing children and cooking, the Bible names all the areas of human activity that each individual and society at large must master in order to survive and live: building, agriculture, in dustry — and culture. Culture involves learning about our origin, en visioning the future, cultivating feelings and celebrating community. These are things we have to learn and practice. Throughout the course of history, they have become as varied, complex and difficult to mas ter as molecular biology, systems theory, the uncertainty relation and computer science. The scientific revolutions sparked by the theory of evolution, astrophysics and psychology with its counter-intuitive dis coveries have become the basis of our civilization. They necessitate a lengthy learning process. And the same applies to art — its liberation from cultural affairs, the weakening normative power of idealistic systems, images and sounds, the specialization of ‹autonomous› art and its departure from the mainstream. And on the other hand, the increasing possibilities of technical reproduction that have led to the commercialisation of those images and harmonies, the growing per fection of the cultural industry. We must train our eyes and ears to recognize and process all of this. And we require complex learning processes. However, it all begins with learning how to read and write. And democracy means no one is left out.

Things have changed since PISA in this respect — or so we’re told. But only ‹since PISA ›. I welcome the educational alliances which are cur rently being formed in many places in Germany, such as efforts to in clude dance training in school curricula, influenced by the inspiring film Rhythm is it!. And it doesn’t hurt that brain researchers are prov ing with colourful CAT scans something we’ve known all along — that performing music is one of the most complex challenges to our brains (and bodies!). A musician reads the music, transforms the notes into neural commands to a myriad of organs, muscles and ten dons, pays attention to the instructions from the conductor or the lead guitarist, listens to the other players and simultaneously adjusts his/her performance within a fraction of a second. This is an extreme

form of multitasking involving the brain, fine motor skills and per ception. In Manfred Spitzer’s book Musik im Kopf (Schattauer 2005), inspired by his love of music and an inexhaustible thirst for know ledge, he claims that music is the only process that literally engages the entire brain: the cerebral cortex, limbic system, hippocampus and the brain stem.

Music-making increases IQ , social skills and math grades — these are the kind of neuro-physiological findings that gradually make it into the newspapers. Taking young people and motivating them to partici pate in an ambitious community project strengthens their team spirit, willingness to work and self-confidence. Getting children to sing in a choir — as the touching blockbuster The Chorus demonstrates — is a powerful integrative tool for re-socializing ghetto hooligans. Dancing at work is beneficial — and may well be introduced in the German corporate world before long. BMW and RWE have shown their man agers Rhythm is it! (motivation!), and Mercedes sent its customers thousands of copies of Sacre du Printemps — a symphonic cultural event featuring dancers from Neukölln, district of Berlin.

It is good to hear that a humanistic education is the soundest founda tion for becoming a well-rounded person even in a computerized society of knowledge. But did we really need consultants and managers to tell us this? Children who make music are well-balanced, have bet ter social skills and a higher IQ — this is true and important. Above all, the language they speak is universal. The oldest flute ever discov ered by palaeontologists is as old as the first cave drawings and rudi mentary tools. Music is probably older than language and its funda mentals as the most physical form of communication that penetrates the very cells of our body and resembles the animal-like sounds of desire and combat. Its rhythm is anchored in the movement of our body and its instinctive sense of time. In contrast to the fine arts and more so than theatre and poetry, music is the only activity with which we can transcend ourselves — into our deepest emotions and in har mony with others. It is the most abstract art form that creates the strongest connection — because of its physical effect and its expres sion in performance with others, the act of making music together. Music cannot make us better people. It is simply a way of perceiving the world, transporting ourselves into the world. It is both exhilarating and exploitable, which is why Plato warned rulers about it and why the music industry is one of the largest branches of the economy. Music can excite and soothe, heal and sedate, it can be a catalyst for social emancipation («We shall overcome») and an apocalyptic hymn («…until the world lies in ruins»). And for this reason, too, we should learn its alphabet, semantics and grammar as thoroughly as we learn to read words and numbers.

But let me return to the school children who will soon be carrying their bulky guitar and trombone cases to school. The assortment of instru ments at their disposal is impressive — the violin, cello, double bass, trumpet, trombone, flute, clarinet, French horn, guitar, mandolin, ac cordion, recorder — in combination, everything is possible: children’s symphony orchestras, string quartets, jazz bands, punk rock groups and folk music ensembles. We are currently working on expanding the range of instruments to include those from other cultures, such as the Turkish long-necked lute saz or the Russian balalaika. From past experience, we can expect that An Instrument for Every Child — Ruhr 2010 will produce its own group of young stars — and in following with the typical bell curve, there will probably be a great number of children who never make it further than «Dona, Dona» or the «House of the Rising Sun». The same applies to ‹conventional› reading and writing. Some children are destined to write poems all their lives while others write SMS messages, some read Joyce and others read the BILD newspaper, or not even that. Musical instruction will inspire some to explore Beethoven’s highly individualised quartets, others to compose the eternally recycled harmonies of pop music, and others to experiment with sounds, combining traditions and styles to create new musical worlds.

Two hundred thousand school children will soon discover that it is pos sible to perform together, which is something many will realize is not possible in Second Life. The curriculum in 1,000 primary schools will be expanded to include an additional activity which cannot be learned using a machine, but only through individual and group practice. A medium with which six-year-olds who haven’t yet mastered the basic vocabulary can communicate, an ‹art› that one can learn and perform simultaneously. A sound we enjoy hearing as we pass by these strange buildings where our future is being formed. In the past five years, there hasn’t been a project I have treasured more than An Instrument for Every Child

Hortensia Völckers is the Artistic Director of the Federal Cultural Foundation.

h i storic e x hi bitions [sele ction]

At its 10 th joint session on 9 10 November 2006, the Federal Cultural Foundation’s jury granted funding totalling 7. 4 million euros to 51 new projects. Several of these are exhibitions based on culturally historic themes, a selection of which we have listed below.

treasures of the liao — china’s forgotten nomad dynasty Archaeological exhibition Artistic director: Adele Schlombs I Concept and content: Shen Xueman (CHN) I Venues and schedule: Museum of Far Eastern Art, Cologne 27 January – 22 April 2007 I Museum Rietberg, Zürich (CH), 13 May – 15 July 2007

The Kitan were nomadic horse-riding warriors who controlled north ern China around the year 1000 AD . They ruled a territory that stretched from Mongolia to Manchuria and as far south as presentday Beijing. They referred to themselves as the ‹Liao Dynasty› and their military prowess put fear into the heart of the Chinese Song Dynasty. Although dismissed by Chinese historians as the ‹Barbarian Dynasty›, the treasures of the Liao testify to its awe-inspiring splen dour and display a unique synthesis of nomadic and Chinese tradi tions. During the 10th and 11th centuries, the Liao Dynasty was the most powerful dynastic line in Eastern Asia and even maintained trade relations with countries on the Baltic Sea. This exhibition is the first of its kind in Europe to present approx. 200 pieces of art which were discovered in the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia in re cent decades. Some of the most impressive exhibits include the cere monial death armour of the Princess of Chen, who died in 1018 AD , and that of her husband, as well as precious antiques from the treas ure of the White Pagoda.

a historic friendship Exhibition on Prussian-Russian relations in the 19 th century Curator: Wasilissa Pachomova-Göres (RUS/D) I Participants / artists: Burkhardt Göres, M. Dedinkin (RUS), S. Androsov (RUS), N. Vernova (RUS) I Venues and schedule: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, October 2007 – January 2008 I Martin Gropius Building, Berlin, March – June 2008

This exhibition follows up on the two major exhibitions MoscowBerlin, Berlin-Moscow, shown in 1997 and 2002. While the first exhibi tions emphasized the volatile relations between Germany and Russia in the 20th century, the current exhibition will focus on Prussian-Rus sian relations during the first half of the 19th century. The close dy nastic relationship between the Hohenzollern and Romanov lines had a long-lasting impact on practically every area of society and ini tiated a period of extremely fruitful cultural exchange. For the first time, outstanding artworks from this period will be transferred from and to Berlin and St. Petersburg for an exhibition that will provide viewers the opportunity to directly compare the works. Several pieces will be publicly displayed for the first time since the former Soviet Un ion officially returned them to Germany. Although this exhibition touches on some recent cultural-political issues, its historic perspec tive demonstrates how cultural exchange can benefit political and social relations. The cooperation between the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, other Russian cultural institutions and the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg will help consoli date German-Russian cooperation and build trusting between Ger man and Russian museums.

origins of the silk road Cultural-historic exhibition

Curators: Christoph Lind, Alfried Wiecorek I Participants / artists: Wang Bo (CHN), Mayke Wagner, Zhang Yuzhong (CHN) I Venues: Martin Gropius Building, Berlin; Reiss Engelhorn Museums, Mannheim; Überseemuseum Bremen (Bremen Overseas Museum) I Schedule: 1 January 2007 – June 2008

This exhibition features approx. 180 well-preserved antiques excavat ed from graves found in the Taklamakan Desert in the far western re gions of the People’s Republic of China. They provide evidence of the historically unique cultural transfer from Central Asia to the Medi terranean. For those who once lived in relatively inaccessible regions, it was quite normal to interact with other cultures on the Eurasian continent. Although many in Germany are familiar with the Silk Road as one of the longest trade routes in human history, very few are well-acquainted with this Far Eastern region and its intercultu ral civilisation. This cultural-historic exhibition was made possible through the tremendous cooperation of Chinese archaeologists and the colleagues from the Curt Engelhorn Foundation and the Reiss Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim. The exhibition will open at the Martin Gropius Building in Berlin.

confrontation and dialogue: german art of the cold war

1945 1989 Exhibition Curators: Stephanie Barron (USA), Eckhart Gillen I Artists: Gerhard Altenbourg, Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Anna and Bernhard Johannes Blume, Carlfriedrich Claus, Lutz Dammbeck, Hanne Dar boven, Felix Droese, Hartwig, Ebersbach, Hans Haacke, Bernhard Heisig, Peter Herrmann, Werner Heldt, Jörg Immendorff, Anselm Kiefer, Martin Kippenberger, Astrid Klein, Gustav Kluge, Mark Lammert, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Harald Metzkes, Marcel Odenbach, A.R. Penck, Sigmar Polke, Nuria Quevedo, Raffael Reinsberg, Gerhard Richter, Katharina Sieverding, Rosemarie Trockel, Werner Tübke, Günther Uecker, Wolf Vostell and others I Venues and schedule: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA), 11 January – 5 April 2009 I National Museum of German Art and Culture, Nürnberg, Mai – July 2009 I Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, September –December 2009

This exhibition will feature about 180 works of art-historical signifi cance — paintings, sculptures, photography and installation art — all of which were produced in East and West Germany between 1945 and the end of German division in 1989. It will explore the conflict of competing images of humankind and ideological concepts in the confrontation and dialogue between the opposing political systems in Germany. Jointly organized by the American head curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Stephanie Barron, and the Ger man exhibition maker Eckhart Gillen, it will be the first American ex hibition to present German art history during the era of German di vision in an all-German context. The exhibition will open in Los An geles in 2009, marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. During the second half of the commemorative year, the exhibi tion will be shown at the National Museum of German Art and Cul ture in Nürnberg and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

the tropics — equatorial perspectives or: paradise is right around the corner Exhibition and accom panying events Curators: Alfons Hug, Viola König, Peter Junge, Anette Hulek I Artists: Rachel Berwick, Mark Dion, Candida Höfer, Beatriz Milhazes, Julian Rosefeldt, Thomas Struth, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Guy Tillim and others I Coopera tive partners: Goethe-Institut, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (BR) I Venue and schedule:Martin Gropius Building, Berlin, April – June 2008 The ethnological exhibits in this exhibition present the tropics as they were viewed before they were socio-geographically classified as be longing to the so-called ‹Third World›. Westerners often associate the term ‹tropics› with lush exoticism — a cliché reinforced by traditional art from the equatorial regions of the world. Although we generally recognize their highly spiritual content and strong emotionality, these works have an aesthetic quality which has long been overlooked. In recent years, contemporary artists have begun to re-examine the trop ics — a mythically-charged subject that reflects the patterns of our distinctly western perception. With works by 25 contemporary artists and pieces from the collections at the Ethnological Museum, this ex hibition will illustrate the artistic complexity and aesthetic wealth of the tropics, as well as encourage new approaches in the cultural dia logue between the northern and southern hemispheres.

deterioration of art– who cares?

The condition of many pieces in Germany’s museum collections is alarming. Most museum-goers seldom have the chance to see these endangered artworks. The Federal Cultural Foundation and the Cultural Foundation of German Länder have jointly launched a Programme to Preserve and Restore Mobile Cultu ral Assets. During the next five years, this programme will help fund model projects that restore works of art. One of the key goals of this programme is to increase public awareness of the dramatic situation, and using several examples, present new solutions for saving our cultural heritage. The art historian Armin Zweite explains that century-old artworks are not the only ones in danger — many pieces of contemporary art are also in urgent need of restoration.

by

armin zweite a

few weeks ago, an artwork by Damien Hirst, one of the most prominent figures of YBA (Young British Art), changed hands for a phenome nal 20 million dollars. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) is a large glass case containing a tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde. The new owner clearly didn’t invest in suf ficient preservation measures. Now the cadaver is beginning to disintegrate which has forced Hirst to catch another tiger shark and recreate the piece.

The original didn’t even survive twenty years. Although this may be a very unique and spectacular case, it is a telling example of a phenom enon now threatening the field of contemporary art. It involves a myriad of conservation and restoration problems, the consequences of which public collections have only begun to analyse in the past dec ade with the prospect of exchanging information at the international level. Apparently one of the reasons for this precarious situation is the fact that everything is possible today — not only in terms of the forms of representation, motifs and styles, but also in the use of heteroge neous materials and highly diverse, often experimental techniques. Furthermore, we are noticing that many other genres besides painting are affected by this problem. Collections of contemporary art not only feature sculptures and photography, but also video pieces, con ceptual art, environments, ready-mades, installations, kinetic exhibits, etc. All of these works are promoted, marketed and collected under the category of ‹Art›, which entails that they survive the present and ideally continue to be valued and aesthetically appreciated in the fu ture.

Since Duchamp, Warhol and Beuys, there seems to be no end to the continually expanding definition of art. A large percentage of these works end up being shown and often permanently stored in museums. It is now one of the special tasks of public collections to preserve, maintain, study and present these works. This wouldn’t be worth fur ther thought if we weren’t being bombarded with such an explosive increase of problems in such a short span of time. As the example of Damien Hirst’s work demonstrates, we are now facing a qualita tively different situation than two or three generations ago when one could generally assume a finished artwork wouldn’t need restoration so soon.

There are many reasons why this problematic situation has arisen. We have recently noticed a growing tendency to use working methods that consciously differ from conventional methods and, at times, do so to an absurd degree. Artists constantly experiment with new forms of expression and design and use unusual materials in order to create something that has never been seen before. Regardless of what the in herent message is, artists always attempt to make it memorable, ori ginal and unique so that they are heard over the Babel of overheated discourse in the contemporary art scene.

Let us look at a few examples. In his wall sized works, Anselm Kiefer uses a wide variety of materials, including ashes, lead, sunflowers, ceramic elements, wire, photos, hair, glass, dried leaves and the like. Their size, complex surfaces, fragility, and weight of over several hun dred kilograms make handling and installing such works especially difficult. For example, after the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao pur chased and displayed the works, the museum curators deemed it too risky to put them in storage. They left them where they were and built a concealing wall, behind which these immobile monstrous artworks remain today. In effect, they were forced to relinquish valuable exhi bition space. Kiefer’s oeuvre may represent a borderline case, but an

extreme material fetishism that harbours unforeseeable dangers to the works in terms of their preservation seems to be ubiquitous.

Material fetishism? No, this is not about material fetishism, neither in Kiefer’s works, nor those by many other artists. Knowing the artist’s intention in using certain materials in a certain way is clearly essential to understanding the reason for such conglomerations of various substances. Meaningless rubbish is suddenly instilled with meaning and significantly influences the message of the work. Think of the pieces by Beuys (grease, felt, honey, fat, flowers, newspapers), Dieter Roth (chocolate, spices, cheese, sausage, mould), Wolfgang Laib (rice, beeswax, pollen) Kounellis (coal, beetles, soot, coffee, jute), Mario Merz (fruit, brushwood, newspapers). The list goes on and on. It is often the visual effect of many of these works which barely have an ephemeral validity (and are often not intended to). They decom pose and crumble within weeks or months, sometimes several years, and as they fade away, we become especially aware of the precarious condition of such works. Suddenly, we feel they should be preserved for posterity, although this may not have been intended when they were first envisioned and created.

Kinetic works are only regarded as art when they are moving, clanking and clicking. Problems occur when engine units fail, obsolete mate rials wear out, ball bearings jam up, the joints of various materials break with the constant vibration, or the built-in objets trouvés simply stop working. Eventually, the works have to be repaired and compo nents replaced. However, which preventative and restorative meas ures can we take without changing the character of the piece and en dangering its integrity and authenticity?

Questions like these also apply to works completed within a set period of time, i.e., slide, film and video projections. In such cases, we have to decide to what degree the authenticity of a piece depends on the pro jection devices and their specific arrangement in the room. However, does it make sense to equate the identity of a work with things that cannot be preserved in the long-term? Is the hardware only of techni cal relevance, or do conceptual, aesthetic and historical aspects play a key role?

For the sake of time, let us take only a cursory look at the other genres and forms of media. For the past twenty years, curators have been faced with what seems an unsolvable conservation problem concern ing poster-sized colour photos, though some manufacturers provide a colour-guard guarantee of 100 years. Furthermore, many are scep tical of their irreversible bonding with acrylic glass and the now wide spread use of the Diasec process. And what about the large illuminat ed cases which Jeff Wall and many other artists create? Due to the in tensity of the lamps, there is no way to prevent the slides from fading with time, nor do we know for sure whether digital data material is a viable long-term solution for creating equivalent, identical-looking remakes. A possible consequence of this technology is that the con cept of originality is starting to become obsolete. There have already been copies of works displayed in exhibitions which were not person ally created by the artist — Bruce Nauman’s early neon works, for ex ample, have been revamped using this practice for years.

Of course, a great deal of progress has been made. At the suggestion of Wulf Herzogenrath, the Federal Cultural Foundation recently fund ed a project to preserve and restore early works of video art which not only resulted in significant findings, but also restored and digitalized

a limited selection of outstanding video works of the 1960 s and 1970 s, preventing their permanent loss and enabling future generations to view them. (40yearsvideoart.de — Part 1, Rudolf Frieling and Wulf Herzogenrath (eds.), Ostfildern 2006).

Let me point out that in extreme cases, there is practically no time to waste before preventative measures have to be taken to preserve the pieces — which means restoration must begin almost immediately after the completion of the artwork. Whether this is the artist’s intention is a different question altogether. However, those who exhibit, market and preserve such works are sure to face some major problems sooner or later.

The difficulties mentioned above dramatically multiply with installa tions. In this genre, the problems inherent to the materials and sub stances combine with problems resulting from the free and potentially variable character of these multi-part works. Often specially created for a particular exhibition, such works have to be stored in suitably sized storage rooms. If not sooner, this is when the first complications arise — especially when the artist is unavailable or unable to take the necessary precautions. In addition to preservative, aesthetic, historic and pragmatic problems, there are also problems of a legal nature (droit d’auteur and droit moral) which result when complex environ ments are presented in a new situation. This is currently the focus of a controversial discussion concerning what should be done with the ‹Block Beuys› in Darmstadt in view of the upcoming renovation of the museum. What is the role and responsibility of a museum in such cases? What established parameters can it fall back on?

Does the museum endanger the identity of a work or perhaps funda mentally call it into question if it totally reconfigures the ambience? Can it partially or even totally destroy a work by exhibiting it in a new situation? Or are we possibly dealing with alternative versions and ap pearances of a work whose meaning basically remains the same even when its outward character has changed? When a curator and restorer modify a work, can it still be considered authentic or does the ‹work› become more a concept than a physical entity?

In any case, it seems necessary to ask the artist as quickly as possible about his/her materials, techniques, intended message or meaning, etc. Max Doerner and Ralph Meyer began doing this years ago. More recently, Heinz Althöfer, Erich Gantzert Castrillo, Carol MancusiUngaro and others have followed their example and have done signifi cant groundwork, compiled enlightening results and established the basics. All of these approaches and profound findings were often tied to individual people and institutions and were publicized at a much later time and only to a limited extent. Only recently has an interna tional exchange of data and information taken place which may now enable others to find a more reliable basis for upcoming measures and decisions. In 1997, the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage provided a wonderful example of such an exchange when it organized a landmark symposium based on this issue, the results of which were published in 1999. (Modern Art: Who Cares? An interdisciplinary re search project and an international symposium on the conservation of modern and contemporary art, eds. Ijsbrand Hummelen & Dionne Sillé. The Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art and the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, Amsterdam 1999)

In 1999, the International Network for Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA ) was created as a platform for discussing the problems I have already outlined on an international level (www.incca.org). Its

founding members include the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage mentioned above, the Tate Gallery, the Restoration Centre in Düsseldorf and a number of museums in Spain, Italy, Austria, Bel gium, Denmark, Poland and the United States. The members of the network provide each other access to as -yet unpublished materials. So far, they have jointly gathered data on more than 180 contempo rary artists. The symposium in Amsterdam spawned a series of followup conferences, but at the moment it seems the number of new ques tions and problems is increasing disproportionately to the number of approaches to solving them.

The Internet and electronic media have made it possible to exchange information very quickly — an essential requirement for discussing realistic measures for countering the deterioration of contemporary art on an international basis and developing strategies of prevention, conservation and, if necessary, restoration, revision and even re-pres entation. Above all, it is possible to sharpen public awareness regard ing a myriad of problems which one cannot generally ascribe to the transience of the materials or the artist’s negligence or technical in competence. Rather, they are partly inherent contemporary art, de termine its aesthetic appearance and character, and, to a certain ex tent, are an essential feature of the genre. In short, fragility and the unrestricted structure of current aesthetic production have shaken the postulate of permanence which has long propagated the idealistic concept of art. This is not especially surprising in light of today’s frame of mind in which doomsday scenarios play a significant role in such fields as ecology and economy. The complicated materials and conceptual structures of current art production reflect a polarity in corporated in these works — on one hand, the attempt to enlighten, and on the other, a gradual movement toward spiritualistic syncre tism. On one hand, the evocation of horizons of emancipation, and on the other, the regression to the mythical and mystical. According to Jean Clair, artwork conservation is the last surviving aristocratic profession, yet in view of this conflicting situation, there is little use arguing whether he is right.

Prof. Dr. Armin Zweite has been the director of the Kunstsammlung NRW (K20) since 1990 which he expanded in 2002 to include K21 (Art of the 21st Century). He has also been the commissioner of the São Paolo Biennial several times. Armin Zweite is a member of the curatorial panel for the Programme to Preserve and Restore Mobile Cultural Assets.

by wilhelm genaz ino

momentary numbness. on begging.

the train was waiting in the station. It was early evening and the blue- and white collar workers were hurrying to catch their train. With tired faces, they looked for a quiet niche where they could relax, which wasn’t easy because the train was overcrowded. Their exhaustion was all that was left from a long day of work. Many of them began to eat and drink. They pulled out pieces of pizza, pretzels and sandwiches from their bags. They probably weren’t very hungry, but ate and drank because it would help them get through the last sprint of a long day, a waste of time sitting in a smelly train going home. The train suddenly jerked forward. Most of the commuters looked out the windows, although there wasn’t much to look at besides cranes, signal booths and grey shrubs alongside the tracks.

The sliding door opened and a beggar entered the car. He was in his mid-forties and didn’t make a very shabby impression. But the gloomy look in his eyes told of the long conflict between his need and shame. His face was drawn, grey, bitter, chiselled with deep wrinkles. With a serious expression and an outstretched arm, he shoved his paper cup in front of each passenger. He wasn’t successful, which really didn’t surprise me. Not a single passenger searched their pockets for a coin. The women were best at giving him the brush-off. Affronted, they turned their faces to the window and stared at the drab scene outside. Obviously he had caught these people at the wrong time. He didn’t think that they might simply want to forget their hard day at work and enjoy a few precious moments of peace and quiet. And then a pushy beggar has the gall to disturb this pathetic home -bound retreat! From his contemptuous expression, he clearly blamed everyone he begged from. They had a job, he had a paper cup. They had good rea sons to feel exhausted, he was only irritable. Common beggars believe that other people are secretly involved in their downfall. Their atti tude seems especially inappropriate because they have no way of find ing out what everyone else has and what they don’t. Being so resent ful, most beggars refuse to acknowledge the fact that the people they beg from are also strapped for cash. They have expensive children, pay exorbitant rents, the next instalment is coming up, they’ve already cancelled their next holidays — there’s not much left for beggars. The lack of success makes beggars belligerent. They grumble or insult those who don’t give anything or enough. And consequently, they themselves are treated with contempt. Many beggars complain that they’re always insulted, even by people from whom they don’t ask for money.

I’m afraid this current attitude toward beggars is rooted in the way the National Socialists ‹solved› the beggar problem. On February 23, 1937, SS Director Himmler called for the arrest of all individuals whose «anti-social behaviour endangered the general public». The majority of these were petty thieves, tramps, gypsies, door-to door salesmen, skivers, prostitutes, ruffians, complainers, ‹idlers› — and also beggars. Less than a year later, on January 16, 1938, Himmler issued a more se vere decree to arrest any individual belonging to this group ‹without warning› and immediately incarcerate them at the Buchenwald con centration camp. Interestingly enough, though Himmler’s decrees were meant to safeguard the ‹public order›, they made no secret of al so providing the system a fresh supply of workers it urgently needed. The farming industry in the 1930 s was desperately lacking workers whom Göring promised to deliver with the help of a four-year plan. In a presentation by SS Oberführer Greifel, the director of the ‹FourYear Plan Department› in the ‹Reichsführer SS personal staff›, he ex plained: «In light of the strained employment situation, our national work ethic demanded we seize all the idlers and antisocials, who would rather vegetate and make our cities and streets unsafe than participate in our nation’s working life, and force them to work.» Today, we still feel uncomfortable with the old Nazi practice of threatening to arrest those whose ability to work was confirmed by a doctor and yet who «refused job offers…on two occasions…without good cause or began the job only to have quit shortly thereafter without any valid reasons.» Granted, our current government does not threaten to arrest and send people to a concentration or work camp, but ‹only› reduce or revoke its financial support. What still remains of the Nazi practice is a con cealed sympathy for the state’s hard-handedness. And, in fact, this sympathy is not always concealed. There are people who remind beg gars that they would have long been sent to a work camp if the Nazis were still in power. The Düsseldorf homeless newspaper «Fiftyfifty» quoted a street worker who claimed «the basic idea of homeless news papers» is to «preserve people’s dignity so that they don’t have to beg». This would mean that poverty or homelessness is no reason to feel ashamed, but rather the fact one has to revert to begging. Destitution

does not strip away one’s dignity, claim the privation ethicists, but wearing one’s hardship on one’s sleeve does. Logically, the newspaper «Fiftyfifty» encourages people to «only buy from authorized sellers who do not beg». Could there be a slight hint of the former Nazi deni gration of beggars in this objection?

Young beggars have found an especially conspicuous alternative to play ing the role of the traditional ‹beggar›. They avoid the problem of having to approach people on their own by joining a beggar’s group. You might see six or seven of them lying or sitting at the entrances of tram stations among half-empty beer bottles, dogs, sleeping bags and foam mattresses. They shout, tell jokes, laugh loudly and sometimes make fun of the smartly dressed people walking by from whom they hope to receive some spare change. They work hard at demonstrating an artificial cheerfulness. The signal they wait for is the rattling coins falling into the change slot at the ticket automats. One of the young people stands up and ambles over to the automat. He hopes the pas senger will leave their change behind. But if the passenger takes it, the beggar stops him: «S’cuse me, could I mooch a little money off ya?» The line is supposed to sound cool or funny, but never seems to have that effect. The ‹normal› passer-by extremely dislikes this form of beg ging — he feels like he’s being pushed into a corner. In his opinion, there’s nothing funny about begging.

Why are we so quick to stay at a safe distance from those in need? Tat tooed and pierced beggars probably have the least success because they lack a display of humiliation in the face of defeat. The typical altruistic citizen doesn’t want anything to do with these kind of selfmutilated freaks. Consequently, the self-mutilated beggar is not only rebuked for begging, but also for mutilating himself. The grungy, scruffy-looking, drunk, or confused beggars are the hardest hit. In the eyes of the well-meaning public, they don’t even have a basic idea of how serious their profession is and how much discipline is required to succeed at it. Most donors expect beggars to have a professional work ethic. If this ethical code is visibly violated, the beggar will have to reckon with aggression instead of compassion. He will have to lis ten to the typical lecture — Find a respectable job! I don’t give any thing to freeloaders! Why don’t you brush your teeth first! Hardly anyone realizes that beggars come from a similarly complicated social background as non-beggars.

I once asked a rather untrustworthy-looking beggar about his situation. He said, «I’m ninety percent physically handicapped, I got open wounds on my legs and two by-pass operations behind me. I get 103 30 euros of welfare a month, I’d like to work, but I’m not allowed to.» The man wears the same dirty jogging trousers every day, the same worn-out sneakers, and the same dark-grey (formerly lightgrey) Bundeswehr socks. People who give him money have to endure his presence for a moment, as his odour is less than pleasant. Could it be that this somewhat unsophisticated man doesn’t realize that his appearance may discriminate him as much as his social downfall? We’d have to say yes, especially if we observe another beggar at work in a reputable pedestrian shopping arcade not far away. This is where one can find those expensive boutiques that cater to a corresponding clientele. And the beggar fits into this glitzy environment, as well. He doesn’t even look like a beggar. He lives in a small town about 70 km away and travels to the big city on Saturdays because he has a ‹normal› job during the week which is poorly paid. And that’s his problem. He resembles the young employees who are strolling through the arcade with their families, buying an ice cream for their kids or drinking a quick cappuccino. People are a bit taken aback by this well-dressed beggar because they can’t believe that he’s ‹that› desperate. The risk he’s taking is high. If someone from his hometown happens to catch him begging, his reputation will be ruined. He is also unusual in an other way. Normally, beggars aren’t very talkative. The shock of their downfall still follows them around and they behave as one would ex pect — ashamed, humiliated, reserved.

This small-town Saturday beggar, however, is happy to answer my ques tions. He only has a part-time job. He lives in a cramped two-room apartment with his wife, who is now expecting her second child. He doesn’t want to be lumped together with normal beggars. He doesn’t even look like a beggar, but more of a man in dire financial straits who will do whatever it takes to improve his family income. He explains that this extra ‹pin-money› will go to purchasing a monthly ticket for the S-Bahn, without which he wouldn’t be able to commute to his workplace.

the labour reports for the last days

The Future of Labour programme has asked writers to set out on a literary expedition into to day’s working world and report their findings. Wilhelm Genazino and Kathrin Röggla [see p. 14 ] take very different angles in their reports on people they have encountered who have become liquidators of a capsized working society. We thank both authors for allowing us to be the first to publish their pieces. In August 2007, the Suhrkamp Verlag will publish Schicht! Arbeitsre portagen für die Endzeit (The Labour Reports for the Last Days), a compilation of writings by Bernd Cailloux, Dietmar Dath, Felix Ensslin, Wilhelm Genazino, Peter Glaser, Gabriele Goettle, Thomas Kapielski, Georg Klein, Harriet Köhler, André Kubiczek, Thomas Raab, Kathrin Röggla, Oliver Maria Schmitt, Jörg Schröder and Barbara Kalender, Josef Winkler, Feridun Zaimoglu and Juli Zeh. [Approx. 300 pages, Frankfurt 2007 , ISBN: 978-3- 51 8- 1 2508-3 ]

The hardest strain on him is not the begging, but rather the high degree of wasted effort. In other words, begging is largely psychological — humiliating oneself is not as difficult as the psychological strain of constantly spinning one’s wheels. The small-town beggar claims that begging is only a temporary but necessary, self-induced anaesthesia. It works for him because he’s a hundred percent sure that this trying phase in his life won’t last forever. He tells me that his wife isn’t as good at enduring it as he is. While he’s here begging, she’s at home, sitting on the edge of the bed, crying. Sooner or later, he’ll find a full-time job — of that he’s certain. It’s not the first time he’s had to revert to unusual measures. As a child, his parents didn’t give him an allowance, so he earned money delivering newspapers early in the morning before school. While he talks with me about his childhood, he steps away every so often and approaches passers-by who seems promising. Back then, delivering newspapers was rather unusual and his more affluent school friends used to make fun of him because of it. «I’ve had to deal with discrimination since my childhood.» Suddenly, his communi cative ‹method› pays off. After sharing a few words with an elegantlydressed retired woman, she hands him a 5 euro note. That will pay for one quarter of his monthly ticket. A moment later, he throws a criti cal glance at one of his ‹colleagues›, a black man, probably from Afri ca. Kneeling, the man is prostrate with his face almost touching the ground. He covers his head with his hands — a paper cup is next to him. It’s impossible to talk or even look at the man. «That much hu mility is repulsive», the small-town beggar comments.

There’s a large street festival going on at the other end of the city. The weather is nice, people are in a good mood. They snuggle up together on wooden benches, drink wine, talk animatedly and are full of faith in the world. Naturally, there are beggars here, as well, and they’re just as affected by it. That’s to say, very few go away with empty pockets. An extremely self-conscious looking beggar stands by himself in the midst of all the tables lined along the shopping street. He looks to be about 30 or 35 and makes a generally unkempt impression. He’s good looking, yet doesn’t know how to capitalize on his attractive face. In fact, his shoulders are slumped, he looks intimidated as if he were a child who had just been reprimanded in the middle of a wide pedes trian zone. The worst thing about him is his self-made sign which he holds against his chest. Made of white cardboard no larger than the top of a shoebox, it reads «PLEASE », handwritten in red capital letters. It is so apparent that this sign is the reason for the beggar’s lack of success.

It’s hard to say why this is. The cheerful festival-goers look down on him in derision. Some people insult him as they pass, hissing curses or swear-words which clearly hurt his feelings. He probably thinks this improper confrontation is a test of courage. He forces himself to en dure the humiliation. There’s no other way to explain why he doesn’t simply leave. Even the children run around him and poke fun at him because he’s the only one here who isn’t drinking and laughing. The giggles from the children are perhaps the key to understanding the situation. The beggar has no chance of succeeding because he is the only one resisting the festival cheer. The people punish him for ru ining their mood. His attempt to generalize his misery backfires on him. The others are far from acknowledging this kind of metaphysi cal trickery, let alone rewarding him for it. The beggar’s moralizing crusade becomes a fiasco. In his Christ-like role, the man is completely isolated from everyone else. Perhaps he never realized that when fac ing a large crowd, a single beggar is always unsuccessful. Someone should explain to him that begging is not only a matter of being iso lated, but also isolating those from whom he begs.

Beggars can create a moment of awareness in people when they ap proach them alone. If successful, their appearance can shock the pas sers-by so deeply that they are moved to generosity. In this way, the (successful) beggar and the (successful) giver form a momentary rela tionship, they form a unit. The jovial giver is at least as sensitive as the unfortunate beggar. There is a brief moment of epiphany when they have to place themselves in the beggar’s shoes. It’s when they sudden ly realize that they could fall from the ranks of the wealthy by some unfortunate accident someday and find themselves in the ranks of the needy. This luckily-averted catastrophe is what impels givers to ex press their thankfulness.

With this in mind, we can easily observe how and to whom the good will of givers is distributed. Generally, beggars who only display their wretchedness are unsuccessful at motivating people to give. There are other beggars, though few, whose technique is immediately noticeable

and are quite successful at taking advantage of the predominant mood of the moment, even if it’s only an amateurish artistic display of juggling with three balls. People thank them for it with generous donations, not in compassion with the beggar and his neediness, but as an expression of their high spirits. A young accordion player is the most successful. He can’t play well, but the music is fast and lively. And he plays the music people know and like. His performances are short so that he can play for a large number of pub and restaurant guests. You could say that the accordion-playing beggar has the best marketing strategy. He completely ignores the fact that he is in a terri ble plight. Concealing this is the secret to his success.

I’m surprised that this article turned out to be a criticism of the beggar as such (and not the act of begging). Actually, the beggar is what mo tivated the criticism, that is, many beggars are incapable of begging. They lack the intuitive understanding of their profession and of those from whom they ask for help. Therefore, it stands to reason that some sort of institutional counselling could provide assistance to those who enter the begging profession. What kind of support could they receive? As of yet, there are no statistics regarding the number of peo ple who are forced to earn their living solely from begging or improve their regular income with begging. In a society that often refuses to look truth in the face, we have to wait ten to twenty years before a problem is politically acknowledged. We generally have to wait an other ten years until politicians finally address the problem. This is how long it will take until our political parties, employment agencies and community colleges to accept the fact that begging is a profession and the more training beggars have, the more effectively they can practice it. Who or what is hindering us from establishing schools for beggars? The clientele already exists — sitting and lying around ev erywhere.

One of the main focuses of a beggar’s training should be learning a skill with which he or she can entertain audiences. A beggar should learn how to perform for people, maybe with a mobile pocket theatre, or, if he only has three plastic rings, throwing them up in the air and catch ing them again. The artistry helps direct the people’s attention away from one’s wretched predicament. Teaching beggars to suppress their compulsion to lie is also very important. Why can’t a beggar say, «I’m in a terrible situation and could really do with a few euros»? Why does he tell you instead «I just lost my wallet with over 300 euros and need some change to buy a train ticket to visit my mom»? If someone is go ing to beg from you, you don’t want to be so obviously lied to. The problem is that beggars believe they need a good reason to beg. We should show them that being homeless and hungry is reason enough.

Beggars’ schools would have an enormous political effect. The beggars would take consolation in the fact that they were no longer completely left on their own. Of course, we will never have such schools in this country. Our nation’s vanity would never tolerate schools for beggars. We would rather get used to poorly trained beggars and torture them with ineffective debates about the lower-class.

Wilhelm Genazino, born in Mannheim in 1943, began his career as a freelance journal ist, after which he worked as an editor for various newspapers and magazines (e.g., Pardon). In 1977, he wrote the Abschaffel trilogy which marked his breakthrough as a writer. Genazino has received numerous literary awards, such as the Kranichsteiner Literature Award conferred by the German Literature Fund [see p. 38 in this issue] and the most prestigious German literature prize in 2004, the Georg Büchner Award by the German Academy of Language and Poetry. His most recent novel, Mittelmäßiges Heimweh, was published by the Hanser Verlag in 2007. Wilhelm Genazino resides in Frankfurt.

the revenants

by kathrin roggla

[ ... ] 2. berlin e

ven catastrophes have to be created, this i know from catastrophe sociol ogy, it’s a project that takes centuries, a societal project. for example, a successful smallpox epidemic doesn’t just happen by itself, it has to be well organized, tremendous effort is required, investing in the wrong areas, neglecting the right areas, and a bunch of experts whom everyone relies on too much. this applies to major catastrophes as well as to minor, everyday catastrophes, the ones people call catastrophes ‹in a figurative sense›. these, too, require careful preparation, a setting, they cannot exist outside the context of the economic, political and legal forms of organization within a society. perhaps the centuries are not their source of strength, though their roots go back that far, shorter spans of time suffice to create the necessary conditions, yes, it often comes down to the small, insignificant changes like the intro duction of the credit card in 1968 or instalment plans in the 1960 s. yes, personal bankruptcy, for example, or private financial insolvency which could be caused by other forms of bankruptcy, but in this case, should be viewed in and of itself, is very similar to bankruptcies of larger legal entities in that it is jointly brought about through the ef forts of society and the individual. and that’s a lot of work. i’m not only talking about the contracts that have to be drawn up, institutional conditions, meetings with bank employees and branch office managers, developing advertising brochures and financing models, not even the economic downturns that play a role in the whole process. a society has to first embrace the basic idea that debt is acceptable. it has to come up with the idea of fictitious money, along with a cer tain calculation method, an economic rationality in connection with surplus production and profit-mongering. it has to be able to incor porate future prospects into business calculations in such a way that they appear to already exist. to produce poverty, one must also pro duce the moral categories responsible for dragging each indebted in dividual deeper into debt. the production of insecurity has to exist as do certain neo-liberal values. people have a generally positive attitude toward investing — a rather modern, unfounded belief that we can create security by permanently investing in ourselves, in our future. on top of this is the coupling of one’s personal value with one’s prop erty, the diverse forms of which derive from various historic sources, ranging from protestantism to the advertising industry. and then something creeps into the equation which is always very helpful for producing catastrophes — a large degree of negligence — economic calculations, social security plans, data protection, psychological sta bility, all of which produce legal ‹grey areas›, those ethereal visions of last chances, quick profits, of lucking-out-this-time, of ‹blossoming landscapes in the east›. and then it happens, for which an inflated real estate market is just as helpful as casinos, and is commonly called a ‹credit accident›. according to the credit counsellor’s botanic textbook, the typical causes include unemployment, divorce and illness. person al bankruptcy is right around the corner.

western societies — europe, japan, the united states — are extremely successful at producing these ‹figurative› catastrophes. we could even say that there’s an overproduction, though strictly speaking, this pro duction reaps no profits and actually works against the basic market principles of these societies. yes, it immobilizes, kills, destroys capital, transforms it into a chasm of red ink, cutting off large sections of the population from access to free trade and the blessed mechanism of self-regulation fathered by adam smith. for this reason, it eventually became necessary to counter this overproduction of crises, to set lim its, that is, offer possibilities of reducing one’s debt. the americans de vised a declaration of bankruptcy and in japan and several european countries, personal insolvency was born — an option formerly re served for large legal entities such as companies, states, etc. which re quired a new form of arbitrator, the credit counsellor.

now here they are, small-time experts in bankruptcy, this sub-species of insolvency whose most prominent representative in all likelihood is still balzac because, in his writings, he endowed the small-time bankrupt with a self confidence that hardly exists today. the private bankrupt who no one would like to see as a vanguard, as a frontrun ner of society, the private bankrupts who are always overshadowed by the money-gobbling giants of the new economy, industrial bankrupts,

[excer pt]

state bankrupts, although they do the basic work and without whom no larger bankruptcy is conceivable — but what kind of work is that? one might ask — and of course, how could one not regard this crisis production and its subsequent management as the heap of work it re ally is? strangely enough, both processes involve money acquisition, it simply flows in different directions. whether it involves special of fers with which people hoped to save money, a refinancing plan with better conditions that only accelerated their financial ruin, special deals at casinos or hot stock options, real estate speculation which really seemed a sure thing, or the tedious processes that follow — dis tribution, instalment plans, deferment plans. profit-oriented mentality is usually one of the reasons why people take out a loan that even tually causes their ‹credit accident›. at a personal level, the first step, of course, is to lose money. Since only a fraction of the population is filthy rich, this is not very difficult. today we quickly consider the option of going into debt which is constantly promoted by all the current investment hype. but when we go to the grosse hamburger strasse 18 in berlin-mitte, or ‹dilab e.v.› on the rigaerstrasse in friedrichshain or to ‹julateg finsolv› in köpenick, then we’ve already completed the first phase, the money is long gone. we sit there and wait for a long time. we’ve heard of peo ple waiting six months, although the employees are said to be quite motivated. operated by non-profit umbrella organizations, these pub licly financed credit counselling agencies are usually overcrowded, i experienced it first hand — 40 to 70 new debtors usually show up at the preliminary information meetings, all of whom hope to declare personal bankruptcy a route only a few are allowed to take. yet who knows who you’ll encounter here? is it a hybrid of a public offi cial and vengeful god, or an employee and prosecutor? nowadays there is all this talk of employees who really tow the line for you, and then you can never find them. we all hear so much about customer service, yet we are still confronted with help-desk hygiene. yes, we’ve left our hopes behind, we’ve left our tricks behind, but we haven’t left the waiting rooms behind. nor have we left behind the incessant meet ings, the conversations to convince ourselves that there’s still a way of getting ourselves out of this mess somehow. one thing is for sure, no one wants to belong to that group of grubby debtors who we’ve all heard about, who we constantly hear about. those grubby debtors who are supposedly all around us, the hartz 4 clientele oozing out of our ears so to speak. nor do they want to be la belled as someone who complains they don’t earn what they deserve, and no matter what they do, they simply can’t earn it. at least some people here are true berliners who can say, «da war ick so kleen, da bin ick unter de teppich geloofen, so kleen war icke» (i was so small i could run underneath the carpet, that’s how small i was). or «det hab ick verkackeiert», (i screwed up) or «versaubaselt» (messed up), but people like me don’t even have that to fall back on. i’m sitting on the other side of the table anyway, facing the situation straight on, or as i’ve just discovered, from above.

from above, they’re offices — apartments converted into offices. the rooms on the first floor of this prefabricated housing estate in köpen ick look ordinary, there are potted plants in the rooms and in the cor ridor. there are the caritas offices in an old building in berlin-mitte with a view of ben becker’s carriage house, ground-floor courtyard apartments converted into offices in friedrichshain where nobody wants to live, or a drab administrative building. in any case, rooms that previously served other purposes, converted rooms, sometimes with an additional waiting room like at a dental practice, sometimes it’s only a small hallway, but still gives you that dentist feeling. the plural is what keeps you occupied. the downpour of thousands of small stories, they cancel each other out almost immediately, they seem to get drowned out by the others because they are all basically the same. i just realized how quickly this happens: how often you hear practically the same stories about miscalculations, endless streaks of bad luck, misfortunes and divorces, forgotten maintenance pay ments, bouts of unemployment, and now here i am, one of countless other journalists looking for those stories that stand out from the rest. you tell yourself that’s what people want to hear, extraordinary stories,

that very special story, throwing a wrench in the works that are kept operating by the experienced credit counsellors, a story that shows them in a different light, makes an impression, somehow. one they’d take home with them and tell their families. because it’s a story that really goes to show…but what?

of course, there’s the story of the 4000 euros, that’s the first thing they mention, the 4000 euros in electricity bills, bills that no one could ex plain. how is it possible? a welfare family with 4000 euros in electricity bills but no appliance that could use that much electricity, how could that be? a mystery electrical appliance which eventually materialized as the bathroom boiler. it turns out the entire family took hot baths every night to compensate, in a way, for the lack of luxury they suf fered as a welfare family. or the 20 cell phone contracts a young man in neukölln signed up for, back when this kind of thing was possible, when cell phone companies hadn’t started comparing notes about high risk candidates. the 20 cell phone contracts that enabled a young neuköllner to call free of charge for quite a while and supply his bud dies with phones until it was too late to turn back. or the story about the tram driver who had run over six people, and the last accident was his undoing because it was a six-year-old boy who looked him directly in the eyes before he could slam on the brakes. he can’t forget the look in that boy’s eyes — now it’s impossible to return to work, that look brought him here, so to speak. these stories have something tragic, extraordinary, a quality that can withstand even the everyday routine. needless to say, in the four days i spent in credit counselling, i didn’t come across anything that sensational, there were only poor bastards who miscalculated, not enough money, a wish to become self-employed, etc., the poor bastards who couldn’t or didn’t want to pay mainte nance, who fell ill, and those who were completely disorganized, who seemed to have all their income and expenditure calculations stuffed in their pockets, notebooks scribbled full with numbers. when real es tate investments suddenly evaporated, there were some who could bear it with a grin and some who couldn’t. in any case, the details fad ed quickly, perhaps because they were all too ordinary to rise above the rest, only the plural, which controls everything here, remains be hind. yes, it’s the plural that rules.

the plural of companies, swindler companies, letterbox companies, le gally operated companies, companies in the grey area, the companies that rip people off, the innocent creditors, the normal creditors, yes, i think i can recall normal business relationships which are often ex pressed in this way. then the name dropping begins, «rbb», «quelle», «drei pagen», «schneider», «bertelsmann», «UGV », «citibank» and «telekom». the names drop and, just as quickly, return to the list — for there is a top-ten list of companies which are almost always involved. they include all-service banks, insurance companies, mail-order com panies, cell phone companies. the plural is everywhere you look. there’s also the other plural that chases the first — «we’ll find some thing», «could you get me that in writing?», «334 euros deduction for living expenses», «request notification?», «why don’t i know this?», «we’ll find something», «request notification. you should get it soon», «17,000», «i chased it through the internet», «you need a signature on this!», «i still have to call him», «let’s just wait and see», «is there such a thing as proof of residence?» «we’ll find something». The plural of quiet conversations, the lowered voices, bodies leaning forward and bodies leaning back, and the slips of paper passing back and forth, details entered into special computer programmes that feed the coun sellors with questions about balance sheets, deadlines, documents and marital status.

this interaction and confrontation of the different plural modes results in a daily routine, and only my idea of political feelings stands in the way, those feelings that would have to arise, that should have arisen. my idea of the one direction it would have to take tugs at this plural and brings me back to the other side of the table where objectivity is key, where the opening questions lie, where those people sit down and don’t want to know what happens in these repetitions.

the first secret recipes after two days of being together. after two days of being together, the nlp technique, a technique of reflection, adjust

ment, the idea that the client has to be picked up and integrated into the programming. he’s like an actor, the motivated credit counsellor in berlin-mitte tells me, an actor performing for other actors, i think to myself, since at the beginning of our conversation, he tried to break the ice by mentioning he’s had some theatre people here, too. «is it a play you’re doing?» — he’s like an actor himself, he tells me again, you can perceive this technique in the pitch of his voice, his posture, choice of words and intonation. pick up the clients wherever they are and lead them into his economic world, into an understanding of their situation, into a readiness to act.

oh yes, they often start talking once they get over their initial hesitation. that’s not the problem, no, it’s more whether they want to be catego rized, want to look the situation in the eye, whether they’ll tell you the whole story, whether they realize how serious the situation is, that’s not clear. it’s also a process, it takes time until a person is ready to lay down all his cards. until a person can look bankruptcy straight in the eye. sometimes it’s simply a matter of denial, sometimes a person has to dig through layers of denial. therefore, you shouldn’t take it for granted that people come here to listen to someone tell them they’re bankrupt. that the people who come here could be eligible for person al bankruptcy. no, they usually think his job is to get them out of the quagmire one more time.

the first secret recipes after being together for two days. waves of nlp crashing over him while he talks about it. nlp out of kindness, i believe i’ve never come across that before. but doesn’t he look a little like a kind clown? but then he continues, it’s a combination of gestalt thera py, pearles, hypnosis, trance, communication science, language train ing and drama therapy. yes, a combination with very unique mechan ics. now he moves on to the three options one must always have in life. those three options i’ve surely heard about before. every football play er has three options, the same could apply to life if you’re willing to work a little. take him, for example, he has his three options and that has made him automatically target-oriented, things are much differ ent now than they used to be when he wasn’t so target-oriented. he used to be a frightened kind of person, he confesses, he knew what it meant to be afraid. and now, through nlp, he’s become a different person, someone who could easily manage press conferences at ber lin’s city hall.

but in his face, this completely different person suddenly falters when he tells me about a credit bureau presentation of a study financed by the telekom about young cell phone consumers. they served quail eggs and caviar there, and in the end, all he knew was this had nothing to do with cell phone consumption and debt among young people. this completely different person spins his wheels a bit when he talks about a new law they’re trying to pass, the new law that will keep the poor debtor in poverty because they’ll have to pay their own legal fees, i.e., defer them, i.e., pay them in instalments.

this completely different person ventures out of his face for a moment when he suddenly says, that he, too, could ask himself what he’s be come, once a socialized kreuzberger from the squatter milieu and in dependent scene and now a credit counsellor at caritas, sure he could ask himself that — no, you don’t have to, i say with a dismissive ges ture, trying to counter his apparent uncertainty, if that’s what it truly is. because i need him as pure culture, as credit counselling self-confi dence. «and you? what drives you?» he asks and interrupts my efforts.

Kathrin Röggla, born in Salzburg in 1971, lives and works in Berlin. She writes prose, radio plays and theatre pieces. Her most recent publications include disaster awareness fair (droschl, 2006) and wir schlafen nicht (S. Fischer, 2004), and the play draussen tobt die dunkelziffer which premiered in 2005. She is currently working on a novel to be published next spring by S. Fischer. The text printed here is an excerpt of a longer piece included in the book The Labour Reports for the Last Days, to be published by Suhrkamp in 2007

work in progress

[ film series in the future of labour programme ]

The Federal Cultural Foundation and the Friends of the German Cinemathéque e.V. in Berlin co-hosted a competition calling on cinemas to develop film series based on the future of labour. The competition’s orga nizers were looking for film series which focused on the changes occurring in working society and its specific requirements and consequences on a local and regional level. This programme will fund 43 film series nati onwide [see the overview below ] . In the following, we present several of these projects in more detail. You can find more information on our website www.kulturstiftung-bund.de

A three-month film series in Osnabrück will focus on the transformation of industrial sites (steel, mining, textiles, automotive industries) into customer service metropolises. Using mobile projection technology, audiences will be shown one film programme a week at a (former) ‹work site›. An especially interesting aspect will be the interplay be tween the films and the places where they are presented. For example, the mining area of Piesberg will serve as the backdrop for the presen tation of an English comedy about a labour dispute in a coal mining company (Brass Off by Mark Herman ). Michael Glawogger’s Work ingman’s Death — a film about hard manual labour — will be shown at a nearby stone quarry, and at the grounds of the NordWestBahn, viewers can watch Ken Loach’s The Navigators — a movie about the consequences of the privatisation of the British railway. After busi ness hours, viewers can take a tour through downtown Osnabrück where short films will be projected onto suitable building facades. In a vacant shop, Mirko Tomic’s documentary Die Billigheimer will tell the economic success story of discounters. One of the programme’s highlights will be Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s famous dystopian vision of a fordistic industrial city, which will be shown at the Osnabrücker Lutherkirche.

The history of the resort town Bad Tölz has been closely linked to its io dine springs and bathing industry since the mid 1800 s. Its prosperity peaked during the German economic miracle in the 1950 s with the emergence of the ‹social cure› that aimed to invigorate and revitalize industrial workers (particularly those from the Ruhr region). Follow ing the health system reforms of the 1990 s, the number of overnight accommodations and the average convalescence stay decreased by 50 percent, resulting in empty sanatoriums, clinics and hotels. The industrial wastelands in the Ruhr conurbation are directly connected to the recreational wasteland in this idyllic town (as portrayed in the television series Der Bulle von Tölz). A three-day film festival in sum mer 2007 will examine the relationship between work and relaxation, and production and recreation. The programme will also feature his toric film material from Bad Tölz and the Ruhr region and other events that address the future of cures. The films will be presented at the Jodquellenhof indoor swimming pool, pump room and park grounds.

In Bremen, the community cinema Kino 46, the university, the chamber of commerce, employee association, various companies and works councils have formed a local alliance to present film programmes based on the topic of work. The eleven film programmes and an ex tensive accompanying programme will address questions like: How do futurologists interpret science fiction films? What is the lifestyle of ‹digital Bohemians›? Does earning your living help or hinder you from becoming who you are? What kind of jobs will people do in the fu ture? In addition to satirical revues, an exhibition, talk shows, read ings and seminars, the programme will also feature other perspectives regarding work. A theatrical procession for ‹San Precario› will kick off this four-month series of events.

The Communist Manifesto defines work as the sole creator of all fields of education and culture. In the former Soviet Union, the government attempted to motivate its citizens to work by conferring medals and titles based on militaristic honours, e.g., ‹Hero of Labour›. All areas of human activity were redefined as ‹work on the front› where work ers were engaged in constant battle. Slogans like ‹Battle with Nature›

Bad Tölz

Kurhotel Jodquellenhof 13.– 17 7 Berlin Künstlerhaus Bethanien 3.– 4 3

Eiszeit-Kino 8 15 3

Regenbogenkino 14.– 18 3

Kino Krokodil 15.– 30 3

Kino Central, Kino Acud, Haus Schwarzenberg 10.– 16 5

Kino Babylon Mitte 18.– 21 5

Moviemento Kino 10 5 6 6

Braunschweig ‹Die Brücke› cultural institute May

Bremen Kino 46 March – June

Erfurt Movement (citywide) March Café Togo 30 5 13 6

Frankfurt/Main Filmforum Höchst 16.– 28 3

Frankfurt/Oder European University Viadrina April – July

Freiburg Kommunales Kino, University June – July

Gera Filmclub Comma 30 5.– 13 6

Görlitz KulTourSaal June – July

Hamburg International Short Film Festival, B-Movie 6.– 11 6

Hannover Kino am Raschplatz, Kino im Sprengel March – July

Jena Kino im Schillerhof, Café Wagner 30 5.– 13 6

Cologne Kino in der Brücke, Filmclub 813 14.– 27 5

Leipzig naTo 10.– 30 5

CineMuro (citywide) April – August

and ‹Battle against Weakness› marked the everyday life of the Soviet Union. The origin and gradual decline of this societal image in the 1970 s is the theme of a film series which will be shown at the Kino Krokodil in Berlin. It will consist of 20 Russian films produced be tween 1930 and 2006, one of which is The Radiant Path (1940) by Grigorij Aleksandrov, which tells the legendary story of a production record set by a weaver in the textile capital of Ivanovo. A related ac companying exhibition will illustrate the consequences of structural change in Ivanovo today and a lecture will examine how films like The Radiant Path helped promote worker idols in the past. The Filmhaus Nürnberg and the Kulturzentrum K4 will co-develop an extensive film series on various aspects of change taking place in working society. The recent strike at the local AEG plant will serve as an example of the repercussions of globalisation. Local artists and filmmakers will be integrated into the programme. Harun Farocki’s films will provide an example of the increasing mechanization of hu man activity and the documentary films by the Nürnberg filmmaker Thomas Schadt will address the issue of long-term unemployment (accompanied by events organized by the Federal Employment Agency). Cinematic fairy tales by René Clair and Aki Kaurismäki will por tray utopias of freedom with and without work, while films by Má bety and Edina Kontsek will address the problematic issue of child labour. The segment Women & Work will be developed together with women’s projects in Nürnberg, and the segment Work as a Health Risk will be produced in collaboration with company doctors and the Nürnberg Forum for Psychoanalysis. The programme will conclude with a large discussion event on the theme The Future of Labour in Nürnberg with business, cultural, scientific and political experts.

In its twelve-part series «First work, then...», the Working Group for Film in Regensburg approaches the topic of work from a variety of different angles. In addition to portraying the current ‹misery of work› (G. Seesslen), the organizers will cooperate with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Protestant Educational Association, the BMW Cor poration and other institutions to investigate what can make work an integral aspect of a successful life. The series will present cinematic moments of contemplation, desire, rejection and solidarity. Utopian visions of work will be illustrated by such classics as Themroc by Clau dio Faraldi (1973) and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), and contemporary works, such as Ultranova by Bouli Lanners (2004) and Aki Kaurismäki’s Drifting Clouds (1996). During the opening week, lectures, podium discussions and a documentary film titled Regens burg Thinks about Work will provide the film series a regional focus. The connection between work and mobility will be the theme of Move ment — the Moving Film Festival in Erfurt. This focus does not only pertain to the film series itself, but also the presentation venues: the performances and screenings will be separated from each other and presented at various public areas throughout the city. By taking the tram, audiences will be able to participate in a network of installa tions, screenings and theatrical performances. Not only will the tram function as a means of transportation, but will become the venue for surprise performances that will get the passengers involved in the fes tival. An accompanying exhibition will present the results of a ‹photo event› for which citizens of Erfurt will photograph the changes of work with disposable cameras in their neighbourhoods.

Leverkusen Kommunales Kino April – May

Magdeburg Festung Mark 2.– 5 8

Marburg / Lahn Traumakino 26 4 1 5 Munich Kulturzentrum Gasteig, Kulturzentrum Einstein, DGB -Haus 9.– 24 5

Münster Kino Cinema & Kurbelkiste May – June Nauheim Ried-Casino Nauheim, Opel-Areal Rüsselsheim 16.– 28 3

Nürnberg Kommunales Filmhaus 26 4 31 5 Oldenburg cine k 13.– 23 6

Osnabrück in the city and surroundings June – August Passau Scharfrichter-Kino, Promenade-Lichtspiele 4 5.– 29 6 Potsdam Filmmuseum Potsdam, FH Potsdam April – June

Regensburg Kino Wintergarten June – July

Rudolstadt Jugendzentrum Saalgärten 30 5.– 13 6

Sindelfingen Kommunales Kino, Cinemaxx June

Singen/Reichenau Kulturzentrum Gems 11 3.– 18 4

Suhl Kulturverein Alte Schule 30 5 13 6

Villingen Kommunales Kino Guckloch May – July

Schwenningen

Weimar Lichthaus Kino 30 5.–13 6

Weiterstadt Kommunales Kino 26 4.– 2 5

Zollhaus / Kreml Kulturhaus March – Aug. Hahnstätten

we children from the unemployed petting zoo

Young adults between 16 and 26 were recently given the opportunity to choose projects that dealt with the issue of work and decide how much funding each should receive from a total of 100,000 euros. The list of proposals was compiled by the 100.000 euro job project team and listed on their website www.100.000 euro job.de. Young adults from all over Germany voted via Internet for the project they felt best matched their ideas about the future of labour. Not only was the selection process the first of its kind, it was also extremely popular. Out of 306 project proposals, the young voters chose 47 projects which have now been realized with funding from the Federal Cultural Foundation. Nikola Richter took a look at some of the 100.000 euro job projects and described her impressions.

by nikola richter

maja, David, Joy and Max are extremely busy. They are hard to get a hold of because they’re constantly working. Christian, who lives in the Bavarian town of Eichstätt, is never around. He writes that he’s at «school from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm», in the afternoon he has to sleep, and if you need to reach him, then at night time, but only on his mo bile, and even then, it’s difficult to make an appointment because of all the «changes going on in his life». Then he writes that he could squeeze in an appointment at 8:30 in the morning, but doesn’t leave his number. Actually, I only wanted to talk to him about his film Staubexplosion (Dust Explosion). In his film, assassins kill a vacuum cleaner — a condemnation of companies that violate human rights to cut costs and produce cheaply.

Christian’s film is one of 47 projects funded by the 100.000 euro job In summer 2006, young adults between the ages of 16 and 26 were asked to think about the issue of work. We wanted to know what kind of work the next generation wants. What does work mean to young people? Do they think of the Riester pension fund, Hartz I V, emigration, combining family and career, or low-wage countries? A total of 306 project proposals were submitted. In grass-roots fashion, the participants had to vote on which projects to fund and how much funding each project should receive from the 100,000 euros at their disposal. From October 2006 to January 2007, the selected projects were granted funding and carried out. What is interesting is how many projects address the misery of the working person. The worker is por trayed as a wretched individual, exploited, pressured, forced and beaten by the capitalistic truncheon, unable to develop his / her poten tial. The worker is a passive figure who needs to be helped. And can be helped. The majority of the project organizers are also idealists. That’s a good sign — and surprising. According to the 2006 Shell Youth Study, only 38 percent of Hauptschule students and 57 percent of Gymnasium students viewed the future optimistically. Apparently their personal perspective doesn’t lessen their wish for a more idyllic future for society on the whole.

Then there’s Maja, 17 years old, who is currently completing her Abitur in Berlin while working as an intern at the HumanVital Clinic situated in the pastoral Schwengauer Park near Leipzig. The clinic provides courses for workaholics to deal with work withdrawal, an astronomy course where patients learn about the universe and the triviality of their lives, and a career obituary course in which work utensils are buried so that the patients no longer define themselves by their profes sion. The courses cost 8,000 to 10,000 euros per week — which shows that the patients had to have worked themselves weary to afford it. At the press conference in Leipzig in December 2006, Maja demonstrat ed the clinic’s motto of «chilling out». She doesn’t know exactly what to say when I tell her that if I relaxed all day in a vibrating massage lounger enjoying aroma therapy, in other words, if I was cured of my workaholism, I’d have difficulty paying my rent. At least Maja learned a lot during the implementation of this «wellness-blah-blah», as she puts it. She put out job adverts for clinic personnel, cast and found them, wrote formal inquiries, organized a press conference and filled an entire website with information. Now she’s more than prepared — hopefully not only as an intern — for life in the working world. She knows that «those who go through life with an optimistic outlook are more likely to achieve what they want.»

It’s amazing how positively she summed up her project. Because there’s good reason to feel depressed about the poor human being, the work ing creature who has to be treated at a clinic to kick the work habit. David’s project, the Unemployed Petting Zoo, strikes a similar note of sympathy. David, who is currently doing community service work at a home for the handicapped, wanted to generate more sympathy and understanding for unemployed people. He comes from Hohenschön hausen, a district of East Berlin, which he describes as a prefabricated housing ‹ghetto›. His mother, trained as a dressmaker, has been un employed for almost ten years despite having taken continuing educa tion and retraining courses. There’s no denying the fact that David has had his fair share of experience with this topic. His intention is to «definitely criticize something.» He wants his zoo project to get people’s attention, «for example, people on Ku’damm, Hackescher Markt, Potsdamer Platz.» He wants to force them «off their high horse», and stop condemning unemployed people as lazy. In four

separate hay-strewn pens, the ‹unemployed people› — played by David and his friends — have to do ‹senseless› jobs, like mopping the floor. They accept any job suggestions the passers-by might have for them, and they hold signs up saying «100 cents / hour of your life». When I ask David whether his mother has seen his performance, he laughs. «That’s a good question. I imagine she’s got better things to do.» When I ask why, he replies, «She’s come to terms with her situa tion. She can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.»

Many of the 100.000 euro job projects remind me of the prose poem Holy Saturday by the American poet James Tate. In the poem, the nar rator has a run-in with a man in an Easter Bunny costume who is dis tributing chocolate eggs to shoppers in a mall. A ridiculous job, for which somebody is hidden behind an animal mask, invisible and in terchangeable — yet nonetheless, somebody earning his living. The narrator starts insulting the Easter Bunny. Suddenly he feels sorry for the man and offers to drive him home. Before the man enters his house, the narrator asks him, «What do you do in real life?» «I’m un employed», the Bunny answers, «no matter where I get a job, the com pany soon goes bankrupt. As if I were the kiss of death.» As the Bun ny hops up the gravel path, the narrator realizes he hasn’t yet seen the man’s face nor knows his name. He’s extremely embarrassed. His ar rogant attitude was a ‹kiss of death› for the Bunny. He had abused the poor man because of his silly outfit, totally egotistical, because he was annoyed. Now he knows the man wasn’t ashamed to do whatever he could to box his way out of unemployment, even if it meant making a fool of himself. He had shown true greatness. And he could be proud of who he was. For the narrator’s part, he regrets his shameful behav iour. And watches helplessly as the Bunny hops away. As if his sympa thy were enough. Yet he and the Bunny are worlds apart.

David could have painted a starker picture of what he knows, what he’s surrounded by. He could have tried to document and comment on the environment in which he lives. Would that have been more in teresting than imitating reality with actors on the street? With his performance as a zoo director, David intended to wake people up, something the sobering statistics no longer do. The unemployment rate in Lichtenberg, the regional district to which Hohenschönhausen belongs, hovered close to 17 percent in November 2006. David has learned that «unemployment goes hand-in-hand with capitalism.» And he’s learned there’s always someone who will «do the job cheap er.» He’s also a member of H-Town Posse, a group of thirty skate boarders in Hohenschönhausen. The hard core of the group is called TWA (From Thoughts to Words to Action) which is comprised of 15 people. They do «concrete political work», and together with local politi cians, organize «small spontaneous festivals against right extremism» in public areas. As it is, there are three NPD members in Lichtenberg’s district assembly. In fact, I wasn’t supposed to mention TWA , because they could run into trouble with some ‹right-wingers›. But then David says, being realistic, those who could cause them trouble would most likely not read the Federal Cultural Foundation magazine.

Most project makers are unable to separate their understanding of work from their friends, interests and family. Everything is related. And that is actually what makes these projects cutting-edge. In December 2006, Peter Wippermann, the director of the Hamburg Trendbüro, outlined the newest working trends in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. One such trend is ‹crowd-sourcing› — people doing work for companies in their free time, like the customer who builds his IKEA bookshelves himself to save money. Furthermore, the worker of the future will be on his own. He will be expected to bring his knowl edge, creativity and potential into constantly changing teams. Jobs will be restructured, they will be difficult to predict and restrict in terms of time, and the results will be open-ended. The 100 000 euro job not only shows what the young generation is concerned about, but more importantly, how they are already working. Collectively, flexibly, technically at the highest standards. Nothing is possible with out the Internet. Programming, cutting, digitalizing — off the cuff. But with all this technical virtuosity, won’t the quality of the content fall to the wayside? Sebastian Sooth, the project director of the 100 000 euro job , was especially pleased with the large spectrum of projects and the expressive possibilities they take advantage of. How ever, he would have liked to have seen more clearly defined standpoints.

Especially when the young project organizers merely aimed to «dem onstrate what other people think about it». However, the opinions are there, they’re just subtly concealed in their choice of topic. Perhaps the projects appear naïve at times, but that’s because they were developed and carried out with a tremendous amount of missionary élan. Another reason could be that most of the participants still attend school or have just graduated. Despite the global range of the WWW , they still orient themselves to a working world with a rather limited radius. When they work, they find jobs as press representatives at the Association of Young Journalists, wait ers and waitresses at family reunions or interns at their fathers’ law of fice. The part-time jobs they take to earn extra spending money have nothing to do with transnational networks, financing the state social system or lay-offs, but good old fashioned values which — though their experiences are varied — they still believe in. Values that are probably conveyed in their classes at school. For Maja, work starts «with relatives who suffer from back pain, and ends with friends who come late to parties because they still have to deliver newspapers.» This sentimental, romantic concept of a society in which each person should only work as much as he’d like, in a job he likes, doing what he can or likes best, ideally without having to move for a job, wonderfully stable, is clearly a sign of optimism, but also of conservative, middleclass values. Doing project work is the best example of a productive combination of work and pleasure, of learning how to become flexi ble, of a high degree of personal responsibility, of self-marketing — and also self-exploitation, insecurity and abstention from consump tion.

This is Joy’s topic, a woman in her mid-twenties and a member of the collective (e)atwork which staged performances in Sweden, Poland, Finland, Germany and Switzerland in 2006. The theme of the per formance is the work of artists. «Why do artists tend to beat them selves up, get very little sleep, very little money, yet do a tremendous amount of work?» Joy asks. Her own project, Trash and Narration, displays trash she’s collected from different places around the world and demonstrates «that things only become important the moment I become interested in them». The event can be interpreted as one of the reasons artists voluntarily expose themselves to hardship. The theatre studies student assembled and catalogued the international junk in a Berlin gallery. She’s sketched the etymological origin of the word ‹trash› on the wall. An archivist wearing white gloves provides the visitors information about the exhibits. The visitors can also take their favourite pieces of trash into a ‹Think Room› in order to build a relationship with the objects. A British-Iraqi artist takes a photo of herself with a six-metre long, black rubber hose which she wraps around her head like a burka. The objects also tell their own stories. For instance, there’s a medicine bottle made of glass that Joy found along the Ganges. It was produced by Pfizer, the world’s largest phar maceutical corporation. Pfizer’s German headquarters are locat-ed in Feucht which is where the blue wrapping she found in Sweden comes from. The fact is, Joy’s exhibition is all about relationships. Though seemingly worthless or, at best, recyclable material, trash is a transmitter. It’s about creating meaning in the time one spends with something or someone. Through exchange, intensity. In this way, Joy’s project is a rather productive commentary on all those ‹superfluous› individuals, as Richard Sennet once called them, who are no longer needed by the job market and, consequently, feel unneeded by society. Joy doesn’t care if she ends up living off welfare someday because she knows «so many people who do great, important work and have to run to the employment agency with all their kids in tow.» People who don’t define themselves by their monthly salary.

Max, who lives in Leipzig, has focused on the dying phenomenon of the ‹linear life›. His project Body Gallery makes hand-made pins and but tons. The 20-year-old Max and his 19-year-old business partner Jo hannes completed their Abitur in March 2006. Hard up for cash, they founded their company Buttonrausch, which is «now more successful than ever», as Max tell us in smooth PR jargon. In the past six months,

they’ve produced 25,000 buttons — so profitable they hope to expand their operations in 2007. The young managers have already hired sev eral assistants to help them on an hourly basis with the more low-level aspects of the business. They themselves are in charge of marketing, logistics, administration. To make sure customers don’t think of them as a ‹student company› — which, from experience, hurts their busi ness image, and in fact, doesn’t apply to them anymore — they tell their customers before their first meeting that they’ll be sending one of their trainees. And then, they go themselves. This ‹trick› is only one of the clever strategies they’ve learned from real life. Now they don’t waste a half an hour formulating their replies to customers’ e-mails. According to Max, it’s best «not to be too clever, give them a direct answer, say everything clearly». In the 100 000 euro job , they have created a collection that shows «complex-systems». With several but tons, one can wear a gallery on his/her body. They address world issues, for instance, referring to service as a product with sentences like «Me Product», «You Product» and «We Product».

Again, the result of the project is rather basic, but its context reflects the reality of work. These two Leipziger high school graduates created their own jobs. The equipment, which they taught themselves how to use, is quite common (computer for designing and a hand press for making the buttons). The young entrepreneurs are confident that following their year of mandatory community service, their business will finance their college education. This self-help attitude is what distinguishes them from many of their former schoolmates. As Max explains «there are a lot of kids from my old school who want to do something but don’t know how. They think you need a lot of money first». Max knows how to get funding. And he also knows that «even one of those German-Russian immigrants can do it», someone like him who came to Germany with his family from Novosirbisk ten years ago. He tells me I should Google Apfelfront, another anti-right extremism project he’s involved in. «You seem to work a lot», I say, to which he simply replies, «I like working with people.» Which brings to us to the crux of such an ambitious programme like the 100 000 euro job with its aim to tap into the personal initiative of the par ticipants. Who is being reached? Who is taking part? The majority are high school students and graduates and college students. And those who parti-cipate are usually the most involved anyway. It’s like after a party — the same people always clean up. It would be interesting, though, to learn how Hauptschule and Realschule students envision the future of labour and to ask those who don’t normally get involved about what they think.

Incidentally, Christian finally sent me his telephone number. He had hardly been at home, was sitting in the cutting room most of the time and attending workshops in Hamburg. Yes, that’s how they are, these young project makers. The European Commission released a study in November 2006 showing that culture contributes 2 6 percent more to the European Union’s gross domestic product than the chemical, rub ber and plastic industries. There are 5 8 million Europeans employed in the cultural sector — a total of 3 1 percent of all employees in the 25 member states at that time. Between 1999 and 2003, this sector grew 12 3 percent faster than the average growth of the entire European economy. Culture generates work and creates jobs. This will certainly keep us busy in the future.

Nikola Richter was born in Bremen in 1976. She lives and works in Berlin as a free lance writer and editor of the magazine Kulturaustausch. Her recent publications in clude roaming (Lyrikedition2000, 2004), Oder mal wieder Halma (SuKultur, 2004) and Die Lebenspraktikanten (S. Fischer, 2006). Her collection of short stories Schluss machen auf einer Insel will be published by the Berlin Verlag in autumn 2007

p rojects e uropean cu lture

Among the many cultural projects funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation marking Germany’s EU Council Presidency, several address issues of European cultural identity and cultural unity [ see European Community of Values? on p 2 3 ] . In the last issue, we presented a number of congresses which will explore matters of European significance. The following are brief descriptions of a European music project, two exhibitions and a European dramaturgy conference, selected by the jury from the application-based General Project Funding pool.

european ensemble academy Creation of several in ternational ensembles and a concert tour through Europe German Music Council Bonn, Gustav-Stresemann-Haus, 15 – 24 March 2007

At the European Ensemble Academy, young musicians from several European countries will have the opportunity to perform together in three ensembles under the direction of top-class instructors. The con temporary electronic music, European jazz, and pop and rock ensem bles will be joined by a fourth ensemble that will form a link between the three other musical styles, and in so doing, create a new musical language. Along with music students from Germany, young musi cians from Portugal and Slovenia will also be invited to participate at the Academy. As Portugal and Slovenia will succeed Germany as EU Council President in the coming years, the German Music Coun cil hopes to make the European Ensemble Academy a long-term cul tural event tied to future EU Council presidencies.

The following ensembles will be created for the Academy: a) The ensemble perspektiv for contemporary music, Artistic director: Maurizio Kagel b) Jazz Goes Ahead! — European Movement Jazz Orchestra, Artistic director: Peter Herbolzheimer c) basement pop - ensemble for pop and rock music; Artistic director: Udo Dahmen d) ensemble trans as a cross-genre ensemble

To form the ensemble trans, ten to twelve musicians will be chosen from each of the other ensembles. Together, they will rehearse new pieces by various composers into which the musical styles of the first three ensembles will be equally integrated. At the Academy, all the ensembles will develop concert programmes which they will perform on tour through Europe. From March 24 to April 1 and from April 25 to April 28, 2007, the four ensembles will travel as ambassadors through Europe and perform concerts in Berlin, Bremen, Cologne, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Zagreb, and — in commemoration of the 50th an niversary of the Treaty of Rome — in Rome and the Vatican. The concerts will be produced in cooperation with local organizers and the Goethe-Institut. The Federal Cultural Foundation will fund the European En semble Academy as part of the cultural programme marking the German EU Council Presidency.

views of europe German painting of the 1 9 th century Exhibition Brussels, Musée des Beaux Arts I Paleis voor Schoone Kunsten, 8. March – 20 May 2007

The exhibition Views of Europe examines how Europe was portrayed by German painters in the 19 th century. How did Germans see Eu rope in an era influenced by such artists as Goethe and Rilke? What did they observe and what didn’t they notice? While many German artists looked southward — to Greece and Italy as the roots of Euro pean culture — others peered over the fence to their French, Dutch and Austrian neighbours. Of course, there are numerous references to other European nations, as well. Caspar David Friedrich, for instance, was inspired by the stunning landscapes of Bohemia and Silesia, and Belgium provided the field of historical painting with important the matic impulses. This exhibition in Brussels will not only focus on the thematic points mentioned above, which — in the spirit of the Euro pean Union — demonstrate the common links between nations, states and regions, but will also present the large German museums which house important collections of art from this period, in particu lar those in Berlin, Dresden and Munich. This exhibition will reveal Germany’s history as a history of small states whose interaction helped form cultural unity and diversity. The exhibition will feature the most prominent German artists of the 19 th century, including Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Karl Blechen, Caspar David Friedrich, Philipp Otto Runge, Adolph Menzel and Max Liebermann. The Fed eral Cultural Foundation will fund the Views of Europe as part of the cultural pro gramme marking the German EU Council Presidency.

made in germany Exhibition Provisional list of artists: Michael Beutler, Fernando Bryce, Björn Dahlem, Elmgreen / Dragset, Slawomir Elsner, Jeanne Faust, Christoph Girardet, Jeppe Hein, Andreas Hofer, Sabine Hornig, Ján Mancuška, Björn Melhus, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Jonathan Monk, Astrid Nippoldt, Henrick Olesen, Peter Piller, Daniel Roth, Michael Sailsdorfer, Florian Slotawa, Simon Star ling, Mathilde ter Heijne, Oliver van den Berg, Tobias Zielony I Sprengel Museum Han nover, kestnergesellschaft and the Kunstverein Hannover, 25 May – 26 August 2007 The Sprengel Museum in Hannover, the kestnergesellschaft (Kestner Society) and the Kunstverein Hannover will jointly present an exhibi tion featuring a large overview of recent works of contemporary art in Germany from 25 May to 26 August 2007. Visitors will have the op portunity to view works by more than 50 artists — of half German and half foreign descent — who belong to a new generation of fine artists currently living and working in Germany. The title Made in Germany expresses the basic concept of the exhibition by shifting the focus of artistic identity away from the artists’ birthplaces and careers to where the artworks were created, thereby highlighting the condi tions of artistic production in Germany. The Federal Cultural Foundation will fund the exhibition Made in Germany as part of the cultural programme marking the German EU Council Presidency.

european dramaturgy in the 21st century Interna tional conference on contemporary dramaturgy in Europe Confer ence Conference directors: Hans-Thies Lehmann, Patrick Primavesi I Participants / artists: Christian Biet (F), Gabriele Brandstetter, Geoff Coleman (GB), Tim Etchells (GB), Erika Fischer-Lichte, Heiner Goebbels, Carl Hegemann, Marijke Hoogenboom (NL), Emil Hrvatin (SLO), Jean Jourdheuil (F), Stefan Kaegi, Marianne van Kerkhoven (B), Jan Lauwers (B), Matthias Lilienthal, Dea Loher, Gerard Mortier (F), Mike Pearson (GB), Tom Stromberg, Theodoros Terzopoulos (GR), Barbara Weber, Klaus Zehelein and others I Venues: (Frankfurt) Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Oper Frankfurt, schauspielfrankfurt, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, (Darmstadt) Staatstheater Darm stadt I Schedule: 26 – 30 September 2007

Today’s theatres have to work harder than ever to develop new event formats which attract audiences in a constantly changing cultural and media landscape. At the same time, they are expected to ‹educate the masses› in order to justify the enormous subsidies they receive from the federal government. As a result, dramaturges are faced with a number of daunting challenges, e.g., to develop new performance and production forms, create concepts that appeal to new target groups, establish international networks connecting various artistic fields, etc. However, dramaturgical education rarely focuses on the necessary qualifications required to master such challenges. This international conference aims to generate more intensive institutional cooperation between theatres, academies, universities, etc., to meet the education al requirements for dramaturges today.

european community of values?

The Federal Cultural Foundation and the city of Karlsruhe will contribute to the cultural programme during Germany’s term as EU Council President with an international congress titled Wert Urteile — Judging Values which will address the common and heteroge neous values in Europe. Under the patronage of the German Federal Constitutional Court, the congress will invite over fifty national and international legal experts and humanities scholars to speak at the Karlsruhe Congress Center from 9 to 11 May 2007. The debate will centre on the disparate legal positions in the EU that deal with the values of ‹human life› and ‹freedom of religion›, for example, in reference to the various ‹embryo protection› laws, the (il)legality of assisted suicide, or the ban on wearing religious-cultural symbols in public, like headscarves. On a larger scale, the congress will also address what the so-called «European community of values» truly means. Europe will never have a cultural identity of its own if there is no general consensus as to what its values are. In the following essay, the philosopher Otfried Höffe sketches the potential contours of a European community of values which could be integrated into the decisions of European supreme courts as they take precedence over its political culture.

by otfried hoffe

aEuropean community of values would seem rather questionable if its supreme court decisions were any measure. In many EU countries, there are widely differing legal positions regarding the private sphere, freedom of the press or art, the hejab, the headscarf worn by Muslim women, and bioethical issues, such as embryo protection and assisted suicide. Values, however, are no recipe for concrete decisions. They only serve as points of orientation for personal and public behaviour. Values convey what we ‹value› and regard highly, be it in a real or ra tional sense.

There are different levels of values which we uphold. At the lowest level are functional values, such as resourcefulness, determination, thrifti ness and a sense of order. At the second level, there are values that serve the common good, pragmatic values, such as prudence and selfcontrol, or in the case of a community, legal security. Moral values are at the highest level. These include personal justice (also called pro bity), helpfulness, charity, tolerance, and last but not least, human dignity, upon which our basic and human rights are founded. Values alone, however, cannot define a concrete course of action, as this is also determined by circumstances and one’s particular situation. For instance, those in financial straits require a different form of as sistance than those in an emotional crisis. Furthermore, one’s person al abilities play a role: a surgeon will help an accident victim much differently than one who is only trained in First Aid. And finally, there is one particular right that is a fundamental value in Europe’s case, the right of distinctiveness and difference. The founding fathers of the United States of America chose the motto ‹e pluribus unum›, for they wanted to create a unity out of many. The motto which Europe lives by differs only in one minor word — ‹in pluribus unum›. Even if a ‹United States of Europe› were established one day, it wouldn’t be able to give up its basic value: that its unity exists in its diversity. The Bologna Declaration also wanted to preserve «the differences in cultural areas and the national systems of higher education.» The fact that Germany — once again — has given up its larger interdisciplinary character and the flexibility of its master’s degree programmes is not Europe’s fault, but that of its own foolish compulsion to over-regulate. The right to be different is also one of Europe’s basic values. This is why Europe need not worry about the differing supreme court rulings in various countries. Most of these decisions are generally not the re sult of differing values, but rather the same values weighed differently. In some countries, for example, the freedom of the press, though gen erally recognized, is not considered an absolute value in itself. Rather, it is connected to general laws, in particular, regarding the protection of children, the right to personal honour and the right to privacy.

It is impossible to mathematically calculate the freedom of the press in relation to its limits on a case -to case basis. What we need is the ability to judge the relevant points of view at different levels of importance. If the Federal Constitutional Court issues a different ruling than that of the Federal High Court and other opinions are expressed at the senate level, this does not mean that the judges belong to different communities of values. Furthermore, German judges who preside at other courts, such as the European Supreme Court, can learn from others as they can learn from the Germans. And this reciprocal ability to learn is itself a symbol of the European community of values. For if the values differed among the individual countries, including the value of a fair trial, then another country’s decision could never be a model but only a counter-ruling.

europe can be proud of its wealth of common, yes, even essentially com mon values. They begin with its political culture, both historically and in ranking. In stark contrast to the empires of the Far East, our conti nent set out on a path of freedom and democracy more than two and a half thousand years ago. Since the battles at Marathon and Salamis, these values have been defended — also militarily, if necessary — and, despite numerous despotic setbacks, have constantly been re newed and expanded. The priority of rights and an obligation to up hold principles of political justice were ideas developed to counter

the absolutistic state. The sovereignty of the people was a concept that countered the claim to power by God’s will. And in addition to basic and human rights, the potential abuse of power by democratic gov ernments was countered by the separation of powers and the right to express one’s critical opinion in public. These basic political values al so include a high regard for the social state and a multi-faceted civil and middle-class society. This is where the private sphere of the family, clubs and associations and the private law business sector come in contact with the state authorities, e.g., the parliament, courts, public administration and political parties. The political sphere expands im mensly to include civil interest groups, clubs, countless volunteer groups, self-organized scientific institutions, and social, cultural, po litical and scientific foundations. This interaction between the poli tical and private spheres partially politicises the supposedly depoliti cised society, and vice versa, partially denationalises the responsibility for the common good.

It is not enough, however, to acknowledge political values with nicesounding phrases. Although Article 87 of China’s constitution passed on 20 September 1954 states that «the citizens of the People’s Repub lic of China […] have the right to freedom of speech, assembly, union, procession and demonstration», the demonstration on Tiananman Square in June 1989 was violently crushed. Another case: Turkey calls itself a «laicist, democratic and social state», yet its citizens still have to demand such normal things as the total ban on torture and reliable protection of ethnic, foreign-speaking and religious minorities. The discrimination of Christian churches clearly shows Turkey how far it is away from the European value of the freedom of religion.

Along with its political culture, the scientific-philosophical culture of Europe also begins to flourish. It brings along a whole new bouquet of values, bound by a multi-facetted curiosity. It thrives on its desire to discover and invent, serves human purposes as medicine and tech nology, and searches for something that has only recently become threatened in this era of mercantilism — knowledge for its own sake. Its humanistic studies are highly respected around the world as they provide modern societies something they desperately need which is economically beneficial in the long term — the understanding of oth ers through open-mindedness and tolerance, which stands in contrast to Samuel Huntington’s premature proclamation of the ‹Clash of Civilizations›. Therefore, it is foolish that European funding efforts tend to neglect the classical humanities when they play a crucial role in counteracting much of the quarrelling within Europe. In most cas es, such quarrelling arises from a country’s restricted ‹church tower› perspective and a nationalism that overestimates its own achieve ments while underestimating those of others, seeing itself only as a victim and its bad neighbours as the perpetrators.

Another important European value is the methodical process used by the scientific community to harness and direct its intellectual curiosity. This has an advantageous side effect in that knowledge can be taught and learned in a setting that unites research and instruction — the university — an institution which is still a model for the world. At public schools, knowledge is offered to all students, while at schools of choice and professional academies, colleges and universi ties, knowledge is available to all those who are talented or interested. Whether mandatory or voluntary, Europe highly values equal educa tional opportunities for men and women. For years, many have known that some groups of immigrants crassly violate this value of equality, yet the European Union was reluctant to acknowledge this. What the EU requires here is a self-correcting political system. The same applies to the issue of violence. The fact that certain cultural groups are more widely represented in Germany’s women’s shelters and violent youth gangs is evidence of their refusal to acknowledge a basic European value, i.e., solving conflicts peacefully. There are also pragmatic European values such as that of rational administration, which, combined with a liberal democracy, is one of the characteris tics of a constitutional state, a strictly impartial administration free of corruption.

Another pragmatic value, economic rationality, is the basis for efficient ly dealing with every kind of resource. This value is now upheld all over Europe, though, unfortunately, more in terms of work force than natural resources. This has led to a global competition that sparks the question: How can a European community of values develop out ofa combination of new markets and new job competition? With all due respect to America’s dynamic economy, any European who has experienced the wealthy residential areas located next to the violent slums in the United States is thankful for Europe’s social welfare system. And those who visit Japan will be amazed that, despite the closeness to nature propagated by Buddhism and Shintoism, the eth ics of environmental protection have been largely imported from the West. Therefore, it would be recommendable to create a ‹magic trian gle› that connects economic rationality from the world of business and work with long-term environmental protection and social wel fare that does not degenerate into a maternal welfare state. The al ternative, helping people help themselves, involves circumstances of anthropological significance. Starting with primary and secondary schooling and continuing education, working life is largely comprised of self-fulfilment, self-respect and respect for others. The modern so cial welfare state also respects the rights of future generations, evident in long-term environmental protection, the reduction of national debt, and an investment in the material, social and cultural infrastruc ture.

Enlightenment is perhaps one of the most important components of the European community of values. By this I do not only mean the period of Enlightenment that marked the beginning of modernity, but also the far more general and fundamental concept of «man’s de parture from his self-inflicted immaturity», as Immanuel Kant, one of Europe’s greatest philosophers of European values, once stated. Many cultures have had their own periods of enlightenment. In Greek mythology, the rainbow represented the appearance of the goddess Iris. The philosopher Xenophanes countered, «What people call Iris is also just a cloud that looks purple, bright red and yellow-green». In this one statement, we see two aspects of enlightenment — the ‹ra tional› explanation of nature and a criticism of religion that rejects the belief that divine powers show themselves as visible natural phe nomena. Thirdly, Xenophanes’ contribution to enlightenment is con structive as his concept of God is ‹enlightened›, that is, monotheistic, and that this «one God» is «larger than all gods and men, neither re sembling the form or thoughts of any mortal». The European form of enlightenment also critically examines the texts of revelatory reli gions. Christian theologians have long embraced the critical herme neutics of the holy scriptures, an area of research that Muslim theo logians will also have to address if they wish to belong to the European community of values.

The period of Enlightenment in Europe led to what has become a Euro pean republic of scholars whose citizens ‹think for themselves› and demand freedom of thought. This not only guarantees the right to express one’s opinion, but also results in competition for recognition and fame. As in politics and business, there is also competition here. When the English writer Julian Barnes claimed that he «always felt like a European», he was not thinking «about elections, referendums and a constitution,» but rather an alternative Europe, a «European Republic of Spirit». For Barnes, this is a special example of unity in diversity. A European Republic of Spirit would be «an anarchic, noisy and friendly place of never ending questions and self-doubt.» The Enlightenment has enabled people to form new relationships to themselves, the world and also God, which is determined by four cen tral concepts: [1] Reason is regarded as one of the basic characteristics of human beings which enables them to create general standards of recognition, action and policymaking. [2] Freedom is integral to the principle of personal, societal and political action. [3] Progress entails all the innovations that lead to better legal, cultural, economic and social circumstances, even when negative consequences are unavoid

able. [4] Criticism is aimed at all the opinions and institutions which keep people from attaining full responsibility for their lives, including a naive optimism regarding reason and progress. Furthermore, selfcriticism is an absolutely essential aspect of basic enlightenment.

The core of the European community of values is comprised of values that pertain to all of Europe, three of which are of special importance: first, that a human being has inalienable rights solely because he/she is a human being (the value of human rights). Second, that all people deserve each other’s respect regardless of their differences (the value of tolerance). And third, that laws instead of violence should prevail in both a community and between different peoples (value of the con tinual development of international law).

A concrete community like Europe is comprised of common qualities that are ‹typically European›. This begins with the language or a welldefined multilingualism in which the laws are written and then later debated in parliament and in public. Behind this is a rich philosophic, literary, social and legal culture. A society earns its bread with its economy, but with laws, human rights and democracy, it upholds its guiding value of justice. However, the bonds that hold it together are based on language, science and philosophy, as well as music, art and architecture.

There are two sides to the European community of values — on the one, the diversity of languages that can only be surmounted by foreign lan guage acquisition, and on the other, the many things it has in com mon in the fields of culture and science. There is also a third aspect. Many Europeans have a particular history and culture, language or multilingualism, or perhaps believe in a certain religion and deno mination. They have much in common within their particular group and build barriers to separate themselves from everyone else on the outside which leads to inner-European competition between these groups. Of course, Europe is certainly not ‹all love and friendship›, yet Europeans can put these barriers into perspective by looking to their common humanity. As a result, they first have to embrace a common Europe, after which they have to put it into perspective, not as an al ternative, but rather as a complementary cosmopolitanism.

Obviously, the values mentioned above, or more precisely the groups of values, interlock and form a community of European values. Liberal democracy furthers curiosity, which promotes enlightenment. This helps strengthen and develop liberal democracy and curiosity. Ra tional commercialism generates material wealth which can benefit the institutions of curiosity and culture in a narrower sense and from which all citizens can benefit thanks to a social-democratic state with an administration free of corruption.

Wert Urteile — Judging Values . International Congress on Human Values in Europe. 9 11 May 2007, Kongresszentrum Karlsruhe. www.werturteile.de

Otfried Höffe is a professor of philosophy and the director of the Political Philosophy Research Centre at the University of Tübingen. In 2002, he was awarded the Karl Vossler Prize for scientific descriptions of literary excellence. His most recent publica tions include Wirtschaftsbürger, Staatsbürger, Weltbürger. Politische Ethik im Zeitalter der Globalisierung (2004) (Economic Citizen, State Citizen, World Citizen. Political Ethics in the Age of Globalisation) and Lebenskunst und Moral oder Macht Tugend glücklich? (2007) (Art of Survival and Morals or Does Virtue Make Us Happy?) both of which were published by the Beck Verlag in Munich.

polish miracles

by martin pollack

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Why does the eagle in the Polish coat of arms always face west? What are ‹Schlachta› and ‹Lumpex›? The answers to these questions can be found in the Alphabet of Polish Mira cles. In over 100 entries from A to Z, German and Polish writers take an unorthodox peek at Germany’s neighbour. The contributions run the gamut from the familiar to the strange and contain information about history, contemporary culture, politics and popculture. The book was written as part of the Büro Kopernikus’ German-Polish cultural project, a programme initiated by the Federal Cultural Foundation. The following are excerpts from the book which will be published by Suhrkamp in autumn 2007

rowsing through a Polish bookstore, you can’t help but be struck by the sundry works of what could be termed ‹romantic nostalgia›. These are generally richly illustrated coffee-table books about the Polish castles and villas of noble families, armaments, albums of old photo graphs from the Kresy, the formerly Polish areas of Eastern Europe which now belong to Lithuania, Belarus or the Ukraine and fancy tomes about Vilnius (or Vilna) and Lviv (formerly Lemberg). Books on coats of arms showing pictures of family shields organized by name and geographical origin constitute a minor sub-category. The fascination with nobility, or szlachta and the search for noble roots have seized many Poles, a reminder that Polish culture remains deeply influenced by the szlachta. Kissing a stranger’s hand, a ritual which has survived longer in Poland than anywhere else, is but one example. With the division of Poland, the nobility lost their economic and po litical power, but not their intellectual primacy nor their influence on thought, culture and social morés. Their ethics have been of particu lar significance. These dictated above all patriotism, service to one’s country, the cult of honour and bravery; heroic struggle, however fu tile this might be; and heroic martyrdom on the battlefield and in the fight for the fatherland’s independence. So-called bourgeois virtues such as thrift, hard work, orderliness and a flamboyent obsession with money meant little to Polish nobility. These attitudes have left their mark.

The Polish nobility has traced its origins back to the mythic Sarmatian tribes, a fact which they believed distinguished them genetically from other castes, and particularly from the hated peasantry. Significantly, the szlachta believed in equality among themselves, regardless of title and property. But as nice as this sounds, such equality existed only in writing. Indeed, the discrepancies were enormous. Some no bility owned a lot of land with many villages and luxurious castles while others didn’t live much differently from the farmers they held in such contempt. A small plot of land, some cattle, a few so-called ‹trouser-belt fields›, or fields as narrow as belts — that was all. The differences are reflected in the numerous names which Polish has for the szlachta. There were the szlachta zagrodowa (from zagroda or ‹farmer’s property›), the szlachta zagonowa (who owned even less), the szlachta czastkowa (whose members owned a share of the village), the szlachta drakowa (whose members didn’t even have a comfy armchair to their name and who had to use poles, or drazka, to sit on), the szlachta gołota (from goły, or naked, who didn’t own any property whatsoever) and finally the szlachta brukowa, whom fate forced onto the bruk, or the hard paving stones of the city streets.

It was only their names, their coats of arms and the small, patriotic al tars where they kept their great-grandfather’s jagged sables, wielded in the battles of Somoseirra and Berezina, which distinguished the poor szlachta from the peasantry and proletariat. The names of bat tles in which Polish Ulans, Cuirassiers, Hussars, Dragoners, etc., bravely fought and died in foreign service — usually for Napoleon — are legion.

The memory of noble origins was carefully tended, regardless of histor ical misfortunes and wrongs. This was the case even under commu nism, despite the advantages accruing to those with a proletarian or at least an agricultural background. In his book Taternictwo nizinne, which means «The Alpinism of the Plains,» the Polish author Jakub Karpinski describes how he was sent in communist Poland in the ear ly 1970 s to do ‹socially-useful work› in a village near Warsaw, where he discovered an invisible but strict division. On one side of the potholed, gravelly street lived farmers who belonged to the szlachta, on the other side lived the chamy, or common farmer. The only differ ence between the two groups was that the ‹noble› farming women wore gloves to work in the fields, at a time when protective work-gloves were unknown in Polish villages. Those days are long past, but else where and in other ways, the traditions of the szlachta are being en thusiastically revived and refined.

Martin Pollack studied Slavic Languages and Literature, and is an historian, journal ist and translator from Polish (particularly for the works of Ryszard Kapuscinski). He was an editor at the Spiegel until 1998 and has been working since as a freelance jour nalist and translator. He most recently published Sarmatische Landschaften (Sarma tian Landscapes), news from Lithuania, Belarus, the Ukraine, Poland and Germany (S. Fischer, 2006).

by peter oliver loew

lumpex

hans kloss

by radek knapp i

the image reflects Germany and Poland’s relationship at the beginning of the 1990 s — kilometre upon kilometre of traffic, making its way to the border through East Germany. Large and small trucks, cars with trailers, station wagons and buses lined up west of the Oder and Neisse Rivers. Most of the people were transporting used goods: au tomobiles, auto parts, clothes, machines — the refuse of the West for the westwards-striving East.

The history of second-hand goods in Polish culture is as old as Poland itself. Entire generations have talked blue-streaks about ‹imitation› and the ‹thoughtless appropriation› of foreign (meaning Western) ide as, inventions, fashion and products. There have been a few competing ideas, such as the noble ideology of the Sarmatians, romantic Messianism, and, in this context, perhaps even communism. But in the longterm, economic reality prevailed and the economic East-West divide automatically led to a transfer of both material and intellectual goods. From Christianity to German law or the arts and sciences to Mer cedes, Coca Cola and civil society, everything was either ‹used› or, if it was ‹new›, it had long been available elsewhere.

While intellectuals worked themselves up, the Polish people venerated Western imports, especially when political difficulties hindered the natural flow of goods. This was particularly true under communism. ‹Import› and ‹export› were catch words in communist countries and stood for freedom, desire and oodles of money making its way along less-than-official byways. The fascination with both small and large goods flowing into the East was not only detectable in private apart ments, whose tenants proudly displayed empty shampoo bottles, dented beer cans and jeans, but throughout urban life. By the 1980 s, the legal opportunities had been created to accommodate an array of firms such as Rolimpex, Grill-Impex, Polimpex, Tech-Pro -Impex and countless more.

All of these amputated tributes to the free market had a peculiar intertextual relationship to the decades-old Soviet penchant for abbrevia tions. In native waters, all of these abbreviations, viewed onomasiologically, had the same origin: the word «Pewex». Pewex was a chain of stores established in the 1960 s where you could use foreign currency to buy Western or Polish export goods unavailable elsewhere. Pewex represented hope for a better and more beautiful life. The name of the firm, which went bankrupt in 1990, is an abbreviation for «Enterprise for Domestic Import.» All of the absurdities of a centrally-organized economy are contained in this abstruse appellation. Pewex gave rise to «Lumpex». The latter also stands for a store which can be found in the suburbs or in large markets, selling second-hand clothes, usual ly by volume. ‹Lumpex› is an ironic word for the realities of the poor who — in a double irony — also believe in the myths of the West. Lumpen refers to the clothes’ origins, generally Germany, and with its echoes of lump and lumpenproletariat, the Polish word also has negative connotations. In the Polish view of things, the ‹ex› is naturally false and derives from Pewex.

Buying in Lumpex is something the poor do, but not only the poor. There are Polish people, particularly young, middle-class women, who like to browse through the piles of clothes and proudly strut their pur chases, extracted from the Western world’s refuse. Lumpex has almost become a fashion in its own right and many shops advertise in the In ternet. Indeed, one of Poland’s most recent cultural pastimes is the scientific study of ‹Generation Lumpex.›

Pewex. Lumpex. Impex and Exim. Linguistic abbreviations to tell an ancient tale. The cultural consequences of this western wind which has been blowing for centuries, sometimes gently, sometimes tempes tuously, remain to be seen. But it has certainly swept sundry things to wards Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. It is a fact of everyday life, life in marginal worlds.

t sounds like a Polish joke, but it’s true. For a long time, one of Poland’s legendary heroes was an officer in the German Wehrmacht, dressed to a T in his uniform. One evening at the dawn of the 1970 s, the first epi sode of a TV series flickered across Polish TV screens, a series which would keep Polish people glued to the tube for the next few years. It was a spy series, set during World War II , and the protagonist was a Polish spy named Hans Kloss (codename J 23). The original title was ‹Stawka wieksza niz zycie,› but for the sake of suspense, if not for other reasons, I’ll dispense with the translation. Hans Kloss looked like the perfect Aryan (which never failed to fool his German enemies). He was crafty but not cruel. He had nerves of steel but knew fear. The sit uation wasn’t easy. This was war and Hans Kloss was working alone in the lion’s den — the headquarters of the German Wehrmacht. In every episode, he had to fight for his own or someone else’s life. His extraordinary intellect and Slavic smarts always helped him out of a tight spot. It was merely a matter of time before Hans Kloss became a Polish hero. Countless women wrote him love letters while their spouses secretly asked themselves why they hadn’t been born as J 23 s. And we Polish boys finally learned our first German words: «Wo ist Sturmbannführer Stettke?» (Where is Sturmbannführer Stettke?) or «Hände hoch!» (Put your hands up!). This came in handy for our tire less backyard war games. The only thing which the invincible Hans Kloss had to fear was not the brutal SS or his shifty spy colleagues, but a new series which soon aired on Polish TV . As fate would have it, this was also set during World War II . The rather grotesque title (‹Four Tank Soldiers and a Dog› — Czterej pancerni i pies) already revealed what direction the series was going to take. The four tank-driving sol diers were less sophisticated than Hans Kloss. Where the spy stole micro-film, unravelled intrigues and escaped elaborate traps at the last minute, the four tank-driving soldiers had but one desolate Rus sian tank at their disposal (Rudy 102), a tank from which they fired surprisingly seldom. In episode after episode, our soldiers tried to reach Berlin in this sorry vehicle, whose engine was more dangerous than the enemy German tanks named Tiger or Leopard. The soldiers’ dream was to hiss the Polish flag atop the Brandenburg Gate, which they finally succeeded in doing in the last episode. Yet had it not been for their fifth companion, their dog Scharik, the four soldiers never would have made it. Scharik was a bit like Hans Kloss on four legs. The scene in which Scharik expertly sniffs out buried German mines unforgettable! Furthermore, he could smell a German uniform kil ometres away, which may have also had to do with the fact that Scha rik was a German Shepherd. For Polish viewers, one thing was sure — if Scharik and Hans Kloss got together, Germany was doomed. Why they never thought of this was one of the great mysteries of my child hood. For years, both series ran on the same channel, striving towards the end of the Second World War. And at some point, it began to seri ously annoy us Polish children. We may have understood Scharik’s position — after all, he was just a dog — but we couldn’t forgive Hans Kloss’s failure to cooperate. The adults couldn’t forgive Hans Kloss for something else. In the final episode, Poland’s super-hero appeared in a Russian uniform. He had been working for our comrades, the So viet Union, the whole time.

Radek Knapp is a writer. He was born in Warsaw in 1964 and has lived in Vienna since 1976. He received the Aspekte Literature Prize for his book of stories, Franio (1994), and the Adelbert-von-Chamisso Prize in 2001. In 2005, his book «Directions for Po land» appeared in 2005. Radek Knapp has published essays in the FAZ , Spiegel, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Standard

Peter Oliver Loew (b. 1967) is an historian. He wrote his dissertation on Danzig’s local historical culture between 1793 and 1997. He is an associate professor in and deputy director of the research department at the German-Polish Institute in Darmstadt. He has worked for several years as a journalist and translator.

by pawel dunin -wasowicz

on saksy

« i

was in Sweden on saksy» basically means: «I drove to Sweden to find a temporary job from which I could, comparatively speaking, earn a lot more than I would in the same amount of time in Poland.» Saksy comes from ‹Saxony›, which is where Polish farmers used to go in the 19 th century to take on seasonal work. ‹On saksy› means temporary emigration. ‹On saksy› is something even well-educated Polish people do. They leave to wash dishes, clean other people’s houses or work in factories for a month. Activities which, due to exchange rates, allow them to earn enough money to buy a Polish car, for which they would have had to save years for in Poland. The word saksy refers to trips to Europe, but not to America. Incidentally, it’s going out of fashion, and interestingly enough, no new word for the economic migration of two million Poles (primarily to England and Ireland) sparked by Poland’s entry into the EU and the partial opening of economic mar kets has replaced it. In Ireland, Poles now constitute the largest na tional minority. There are geographical preferences in economic mi gration. Silesians go to Germany, Bergler go to the US , and people from Polesia to France and Belgium.

Saxony also has a connection to the ‹Saxonian axis› in Warsaw, a row of buildings dating back to August the Strong, Elector of Saxony, and the ‹Saxon stronghold› (Saska Kepa), a district originally settled by the Dutch (who were mistakenly believed to be from Saxony).

maciej sienczyk

The illustrations in this issue were made by the young multi-talented Polish artist Maciej Sienczyk. The art critic Dorota Jarecka, editor of the arts and culture section in the Warsaw newspaper Gazeta Wyborc za, introduces Sienczyk and his works.

Self doubting, neurotic, black-humoured and immeasurably detached — these are the defining characteristics that make this artist who he is. Maciej Sienczyk has established his own position in the Polish art scene. His pictures and narrative style are strongly rooted in mass culture. Yet, I would say the Vienna Secession and Art Nouveau have the strongest recognizable influence on his art. Sienczyk’s trademarks are the subtlety of his drawings and his strong, contour-filling colour shading. Sometimes the style of the old engravings from the English editions of Andersen’s fairytales, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, or Shock-Headed Peter shimmer through his illustrations.

Sienczyk was born in Lublin, Poland in 1972. In 1996, he made his debut in the literary magazine Ariergarda (Rearguard) with a comic strip about an artist who unexpectedly becomes famous. After studying painting at the Warsaw Academy of the Arts, he drew illustrations of internal organs for a medical publisher for one year. Sienczyk tried selling his comics to various magazines, most of which found them revolting. He finally landed a job as an illustrator for the Warsaw liter ary magazine Lampa. Meanwhile, many people now claim Sienczyk’s comics are the best in Poland. In 2005, Lampa i Iskra Boza published Sienczyk’s comics in an album titled Hydriola. They tell fantastic sto ries, for example, about a spherical man who gets washed up onto the shore, or a sailor who discovers a mini human named ‹Particle› living on his finger, or a little girl who finds two eggs under a bush laid by a human hen.

In addition to comics, Sienczyk’s works also include paintings and book illustrations. He has recently illustrated several books by the young prize-winning Polish writer Dorota Masłowska. Maciej Sienczyk cur rently resides in Warsaw.

Pawel Dunin-Wasowicz (b. 1967) is a journalist and the publisher and editor of the Polish literary magazine Lampa, which appears in Warsaw.

Ed., Stefanie Peter, Alphabet of Polish Miracles. With drawings by Maciej Siencyzk, Suhrkamp Verlag, will ap pear in autumn 2007. The drawings in this issue are also by Maciej Sienczyk. For more about Sienczyk, see below.

by emir imamovic

taking memory to the street

Who remembers what? Whose memories can reach consensus? Following a war, such questions are ex tremely explosive — both socially and politically. By what artistic means can and should war memorials and monuments honouring its victims be acceptably created? These questions were central to the project De/construction of Monument within the framework of relations, initiated by the Federal Cultural Foun dation as part of the transformation process taking place in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2005, De/con struction of Monument announced a Bosnia-wide competition for a new memorial in Sarajevo. From 32 entries, contributions by the artists Braco Dimitrijevi´c, Nermina Omerbegovi´c/Aida Paši´c and NebojšaŠeri´c Šoba were selected by an international jury based on a popular vote. On November 18 th, 2006, the Memorial for the Victims of War and the Cold War by the internationally renowned artist Braco Dimitrijevi´c of Sarajevo was unveiled in front of the Historical Museum. In Sarajevo, there were heated debates about the new public monuments. The Bosnian journalist Emir Imamovi´c, who lives in Sarajevo, reports from the eye of the storm.

mrs. M., white-haired, hunched and frail, could recently be seen in front of the Historical Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina, sobbing quietly as she carefully read the words chiseled in a large, white cuboid: «Be neath this stone, there is a memorial for the victims of war and the Cold War». Well into her 80 s, she had lived in four countries and three streets, although she had literally never moved out of the home in which she had been born, with its old portraits hanging on worn walls.

A portrait of her grandfather, who had once been a well-known tradesman of leather goods, doing business with customers from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik, Venice and Vienna

A portrait of her father, who had worked as an official for the fascist Independent State of Croatia, or the Nezavisna Država Hrvatska (NDH ) and as a minor spy for the Sarajevan Gestapo

A portrait of her husband, a young, partisan lieutenant, whom Tito had personally given a Luger rifle with a dedication thank ing him for his heroic deeds in the liberation of Bosnian-Herze govina’s capital during World War II

A portrait of her son, killed by a Serbian sharp-shooter’s bullet in the summer of 1995

And one of her grandson, who has forged a career as an engineer in Stockholm, where he has lived ever since grasping the rule gov erning the history of his homeland — bad times only get worse.

Sarajevo’s city administration has no documents testifying to Mrs. M’s existence. The fire which destroyed the public library after the histor ical Austro-Hungarian building was hit by grenades when the city was under siege also destroyed the documents pertaining to leather tradesmen, lists of Nazi employees and the first issue of the daily pa per Oslobodenje, which contained an interview with a partisan lieu tenant about an award he received from Josip Broz Tito. The gravesite in the public cemetery where Mrs. M’s son is buried cannot be found and her grandson has taken on Swedish citizenship, changed his name and wiped away the traces of his origins.

So it is easy to argue that Mrs. M. doesn’t exist, never existed and that someone had simply made up her entire life, someone who, you might say, couldn’t distinguish between fiction & faction. But be careful, we are talking about Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in these places, history doesn’t just stop. It always begins anew. In the past eighty years, both the city and the nation belonged to the kingdom of Yugoslavia, then to the Independent State of Croatia (NDH ), one of the Third Reich’s satellite states. Then they belonged to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito and his failed successors. Now they are part of the new Bosnia, whose borders were traced out by Americans stationed at Wright Patterson military base in Dayton, Ohio. Our heroine, who embodies the fate of thousands like her, was able to observe the founding and evolving of every state from her window. This window looks out onto a street which, in her youth, was named Petar I Karadordevic, for the Serbian-Yugoslavian king who fled Belgrade as soon as he heard the Luftwaffe approach ing. The street was then renamed Dr. Ante Pavelic Street after the head of the Balkans Department in the Third Reich. Today, Maršala Tita, or Marshall Tito, is named after Josip Broz, the charismatic leader of the southern Slavic partisans who ruled a socialistic country which fell apart painfully and tragically.

Three years ago, in the weeks following the death of independent Bos nia-Herzegovina’s first president, Alija Izetbegovi´c, it looked as if the story would literally end in Maršala Tita. After the memorial services and repeated oaths to establish a memorial to the conservative lead er, his colleagues suggested renaming the street outside Mrs. M.’s window Alija Izetbegovi´c Street The numbed Bosnian public, divided naturally into Tito and Alija camps, reacted to this suggestion with unusual vitriol. Any hopes that people had finally tired of ideologi cally-motivated public monuments quickly vanished. Very few, out side the small circle of intellectuals around the writer Ivan Lovrenovi´c, saw the absurdity of continually changing names with every new re gime or ideological transformation. In the bitter debates, people were

only concerned with who was better, worthier or more important, «Comrade Tito» or «President Izetbegovi´c». The argument was put to an end by Izetbegovi´c’s son Bakir. His father had not, after all, fought for a street, but rather.... But that’s another long, endless story.

Through the interesting vagaries of chance, the end of the ‹street battle› came at the same time as the public launching of De /construction of Monument. This interdisciplinary project was initiated by the Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art, or SCCA for short, which the art his torian Dunja Blaževi´c has successfully run for almost a decade, in cooperation with relations, an initiative by the Federal Cultural Foun dation. Reality thus staged the play to accompany the project, which aimed to question the notion of the right to public space and the cul ture of memorial art as the most significant form of ideological pub lic intervention; to de-mystify the past and to acknowledge reality in a different way, without the burdens of transition and post-war trauma. The SCCA pointed De/construction of Monument into two basic direc tions readily absorbing other currents which arose in reaction to the chaos caused by Bosnia-Herzegovina’s multi-layered administration. On the one hand, it organized discussions, inviting artists, critics, his torians and other public figures. On the other, it announced the com petition New Monument. Artistic works were sought which redefined the public memorial in Bosnia-Herzegovina and, for unavoidable his torical reasons, in post Yugoslavia. This past world also needed to be reflected upon, but not in memorials promoting new ideologies; the effects of the new memorials needed to unfold freely in public space. The past century, particularly the second half, gave rise to a character istic memorial culture. Tito’s regime left behind a glut of monuments to heroes, battles and victims, primarily created — and this isn’t a mi nor point — by the leading artists of the time. At the end of the centu ry, the monuments were blown up and the sparks created a new politi cal environment. The memorials ended up looking just like the cul turally valuable buildings of the people who had been expelled and just like Yugoslavia itself: fragmented and destroyed. The end of the Balkan wars meant neither their rebuilding nor some kind of belated appreciation of the ruins, but rather a strategic ignorance of the exist ing problems. The old system was exploited to create new heroes and (their) victims.

Although the SCCA and the project’s participants were actively in volved, the public remained passive. Various institutions reacted hostilely. It took one or another sophistic gag — like the raising of a monument to the Kung-Fu idol Bruce Lee in Mostar or the public performance Odlukom Komisije: Svi na svoje (The Commission rec ommends: take back what belongs to you!) by the artistic duo Kurt & Plasto who went around Sarajevo placing busts of themselves atop the pedestals of writers no longer in ideological favour in order to attract attention to the idea of De/construction of Monument. Na turally, the SCCA did not let such hurdles deter it and it selected three artists, or rather, their ‹new memorials›. It offered Sarajevo three proposals:

1 A white cuboid with an engraving in four languages: Beneath this stone there is a memorial for the victims of war and the Cold War by Braco Dimitrijevi´c, an artist with a fascinating biography.

2 Eglen-Park or the Pedestal of Memory (a work which recalls the cul ture of open communication and free speech in parks, the only place where citizens could gather) by Nermina Omerbegovi´c and Aida Paši´c

3 A Memorial for the International Community, a pop-art memorial for the United Nations (a huge can, the original of which the citizens of Sarajevo received as humanitarian aid and containing a tasteless and odorless product, ingredients unknown and lacking a ‹best used by› date) by the artist Nebojša Šeri´c Šoba, who currently lives in New York.

At the end of last year, it became clear that the proposal for the memori al was the easiest part of the whole venture. Right through autumn, Dunja Blaževi´c fought with the municipal authorities, invested a great deal of time in acquiring local permits and tried to explain to very partial bureaucrats the point of De/construction of Monument. A few

weeks ago, on November 18 of last year, when both the Historical Museum was opened with speeches and red wine and Dimitrijevi’s work was unveiled, Dunja Blaževi´c finally managed to acquire the necessary permit. She had also survived communication hell, having to deal with people who had behaved as if they were Finns speaking Chinese. When Dunja Blaževi´c talks about all of the ignominious, though occasionally, successful meetings she had with government ministers and officials, it resembles a Kafkaesque comedy, in which characters from the legendary Italian cartoon Alan Ford have lost their way. It certainly wouldn’t be false to say that Dunja would have capitulated or landed in psychiatric care if she had not known from the beginning that being side-tracked along official routes was an integral part of the project. For it is the regime’s self-awareness which monuments occupying public space address, space identical with what came before, differing only in a few aesthetic criteria and ideo logical profile. Neither Sarajevo nor Bosnia-Herzegovina has clearlydefined cultural policies, although they certainly have a distinctly post colonial consciousness. That’s why the work by Nebojša Šeri´c Šoba was seen as an insult to the United Nations (which also tickled Bosnia-Herzegovina’s German diplomats).

Despite everything, De/construction of Monument is coming to a suc cessful close. There have been a few promises: both the Pedestal of Memory as well as the Memorial for the International Community are supposed to be given their own space — not the best space for the me morials to communicate fully with all citizens, but....

Until then, it’s worth taking a walk around Dimitrijevi´cs’s work, be neath which the «memorial for the victims of war and the Cold War» can be found. It is dedicated to all of the Mrs. M.s and their hus bands, who were ‹liquidated› in the Cold War or killed in real war while history was made in their street, always hoping that the one war would end, always praying that a new one wouldn’t begin.

p oland h unga ry c zech r epublic

The Federal Cultural Foundation is continuing its bilateral cultural exchange programmes with countries in Eastern Europe. While the Foundation is busy planning the launch of a new exchange programme with the Czech Republic this coming autumn, the German-Hungarian Bipolar projects, the follow-up pro gramme of Büro Kopernikus [ see page 27 ] , are now in full swing. With 32 projects, 70 participating institutions and over 100 events, the German and Hungarian cultural scenes will soon become much more acquainted with each other.

One project, for example, examines Heiner Müller’s Hamletmaschine (Hamlet Machine) in which he begins with the words «I was standing on the shore, saying BLABLA to the surging waves, at my back lay the ruins of Europe.» Müller’s text is an aggressive deformation of the conventional dramatic form — no plot, no dialogue, only a series of «monological blocks» by a failed intellectual who describes his experi ences during the uprisings in the GDR in June 1953 and Budapest in 1956, two «calamitous» dates in Europe’s recent history. Many do not realize that Hamletmaschine is actually a fragment of a larger piece ti tled HiB — Hamlet in Budapest written in the 1960 s. Bipolar will use this fragment as the starting point for a cooperative venture between the International Heiner Müller Society and the Budapest Workshop Foundation. The project will culminate in a performance at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater in June, and later in Budapest, for which the entire city will function as the stage. Equipped with headphones, the audience will walk to the important historic spots in the city, while lis tening to Heiner Müller’s dramatic text, combined with interviews with young Hungarians who describe how they perceive the uprisings today.

Overview of selected projects in the Bipolar programme: 21 April 07 Half Time!

Project presentations and party at Radialsystem, Berlin I Bipolar will present coopera tive projects and their project makers. More than artists and project participants from Hungary and Germany will be in attendance. Admission free 30 April 07 HunD Link

Simultaneous concert at the Cologne MusikTriennale Köln and the Györ Mediawave

Festival I A digitally-linked concert performed simultaneously at two festivals — fea turing Mathias Muche, Sven Hahne, István Grencsó, Kornél Szilágyi and others 2 June 07 HiB — Hamlet in Budapest. Hamlet in Berlin

Heiner Müllers Hamletmaschine at the Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin I with andcom pany& Co., SPACE, David Marton, Lutz Dammbeck, the International Heiner Müller Society and the Workshop Foundation Budapest. 22 June 19 August 07 Kempelen — Minor Figure of History

Exhibition featuring current artistic positions at the ZKM in Karlsruhe I with works by Attila Csörgo, Ken Feingold, Márton Fernezelyi, Péter Forgács, Severin Hofmann, György Jovánovics, Martin Riches, Robotlab, Zoltán Szegedy-Maszák, Tamás Waliczky and Georg Winter I Curator: József Mélyi I Production: C3 Budapest I The exhibi tion will be shown at the Mucsarnok in Budapest until 28 May 2007 13 August 07 Helmut Oehring — Pál Frenák: Instinct Danceproduction in the Muffathalle München I Co-produced by Sziget Fesztivál und Frenák Company I World premiere: 7 + 8 August at the Sziget Fesztivál in Budapest.

The Hungarian-German exhibition Kempelen, organized by the Bu dapest media art centre C3 and the Center for Art and Media Tech nology in Karlsruhe, focuses on the ‹many lives› of another outstand ing individual, a philanthropic ‹project maker› at the court of the Aus tro-Hungarian empress Maria-Theresia. Wolfgang von Kempelen was a whizkid during the age of Enlightenment — a technological genius, influential officer, translator, poet, and above all, inventor and marketer of the mysterious chess automatons, for which he became legendary following an extensive tour through Europe. His remark able legacy still affects us today, especially in view of the fact that this project features almost twenty positions of contemporary art which deal with Kempelen and the unabated, conflict-ridden relationship between humans and technology. The Budapest exhibition will run until the end of May 2007, and will then be shown in Karlsruhe in June.

8 9 +14 16 September 07 Commander Kobayshi, Season 111 Opera saga with Samu Gryllus and Klaus Lang, Sophiensaele Berlin I 2 short operas by Samu Gryllus and Klaus Lang performed in cooperation with the Ensemble Mosaik I Co-produced by: NOVOFLOT , Sophiensaele Berlin and Trafó Budapest I Additional performances: 28 + 29 September at Trafó, Budapest.

13 October 07 Closing concert — In Memory of György Ligeti Concert featuring the composition award winners at the Academy of the Arts, Berlin (Pariser Platz) I World premiere of the three prize-winning pieces of the composition competition. I Submission deadline for compositions: 15 May I Jury members: Péter Eötvös, Zoltán Jeney, Hanspeter Kyburz I In cooperation with the Collegium Hun garicum Berlin and ‹Hungarian Accent›.

Special dates in Hungary: 26 – 27 April 07 Stumbling Blocks in Hungary

Emir Imamovi c (*1973 in Tuzla, Bosnia) works as a journalist for TV and the print media. He has been a regular contributor to Dani since 1996, Bosnia Herzegovina’s most influential news magazine, and acted briefly as its editor-in-chief. He has re ported from Kosovo, Macedonia and Afghanistan. Currently, Imamovi c’s articles are published in Dani and in the magazine Gracija, which appears in Sarajevo. He is also preparing his first novel and writing scripts for documentary films. He lives in Sarajevo. ´´

Laying memorial stones in Budapest, exhibition in the B Galéria Budapest I In cooper ation with the NS-Documentation Centre in Cologne I Additional programme: Lecture by Gunter Demnig I Podium discussion: with Ágnes Berger, László Karsai, Werner Jung and others 6 9 September 07 Bipolar Opens the Budapest Music Forum Conference on real-time performances and a concert series marking the grand opening of the Budapest Music Forum, in cooperation with the HCMF Budapest and HMTH Hamburg.

For more informationen: www.projekt-bipolar.net

p rojects c entral and e a stern e urope

selectio n

Projects about themes and with partners from Central and Eastern Europe comprise one of the major ar eas of funding at the Federal Cultural Foundation. In addition to several programmes initiated by the Foundation itself, such as relations [ see Taking Memory to the Street on p 33 ] and Büro Kopernikus [ see Polish Miracles on p. 27 ] , there are many projects from the application-based General Project Funding pool that also focus on Central and Eastern Europe. The following is a selection of projects which we are currently funding (selected at the 10 th Jury Session in November 2006). For information about how to apply for funding from the Federal Cultural Foundation, please refer to the detailed instructions on our website www.kulturstiftung-bund.de under the menu heading Project Funding

don’t worry — be curious!

4th Ars Triannial of Photographic Art Exhibition Curators: Dorothee Bienert, Kati Kivinen (FIN), Enrico Lunghi (L) I Artists: Petra Bauer (S), Anna Baumgart (PL), Olga Chernysheva (RUS), Bodil Furu (N), Kaspars Goba (LV), Kristina Incraite (LT), J&K (Janne Schäfer, Kristin Agergaard (D/ DK), Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen (FIN/D), Anu Pennanen (FIN), Tanja N. Poulsen (DK), Khaled Ramadan & Colonel (DK), Katrin Tees (EST), Arturas Valiauga (LT), Julita Wójcik (PL) and others I Venues and schedule: Stadtgalerie Kiel, 30 March 28 May 2007 I KUMU, Estonian Art Museum, Tallinn (EST), 10 August – 23 Septem ber 2007 I Pori Art Museum (FIN), 12 October 2007 – 20 January 2008

The social, political and economic reality in Europe today is radically changing. For many Europeans, the restructuring has led to the per ceived loss of national homeland, disintegration of stable social rela tionships, and a growing individualization, accompanied by increased unemployment, passivity and political lethargy. The citizens of north ern Europe experience this upheaval as a crisis that has befallen their welfare state, while eastern Europeans regard it as a consequence of capitalism that filled the void following the collapse of socialism. Through photos, videos and installations, artists from five eastern and five northern European countries will address the common problems and diverse fears facing the people in their countries. The exhibition and accompanying conferences and artist-in-residence programme will be presented at the 4th Ars Baltica Triennial of Photographic Art in Kiel, and later in Tallinn (Estonia) and Pori (Finland).

autoput avrupa Interdisciplinary event series on the history of immigration Artistic director: Shermin Langhoff (TR/D) I Participants /artists: Autoput (HR/BIH/SCG), Nuran David Calis (TR/D), Neco Celik (TR/D), Emre Koyuncuoglu (TR), Tuncay Kulaoglu (TR/D)/Martina Priessner (TR/D), Angela Melitopoulos (GR), Na tasa Rajkovic/Bobo Jelcic (both HR), Idil Üner (TR/D), Tamer Yigit (TR/D), Feridun Zaimo glu (TR/D) I Venue and schedule: Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, March 2007 ‹Autoput› is the name of the transit route through former Yugoslavia which many work immigrants took to Germany from Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey decades ago. For many, ‹Autoput› still represents one of the most important connections to the home country and, consequently, plays a symbolic role in the history of immigration in Ger many. ‹Autoput› will now be the general theme of an event programme featuring theatre, dance, film, readings and discussions on immigra tion. The theatre performances will address the cultural practices of certain immigrant groups, contrasting the distinct ghetto-style scenes of life in Germany as portrayed in movies. In a live performance, the fine artist Nevin Aladag will send 100 homing pigeons on their way ‹home›. Ercan Arslan will allow audiences to experience his own im migrant background using video sequences, recordings, and live tele phone conversations with his relatives. The programme will also fea ture the revival of Neco Celik’s successful semi-documentary Black Virgins by Zaimoglu/Senkel, which is based on interviews by radical Muslim women.

eastward Cooperation between young musicians and composers from Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Russia Artistic director: Sabine Franz (A)

I Participants/ musicians: ensemble recherche: Åsa Åkerberg (S), Jean-Pierre Collot (F) Christian Dierstein, Martin Fahlenbock, Jaime González (RCH), Barbara Maurer, Melise Mellinger (RO), Shizuyo Oka (J), Klaus Steffes-Holländer, Ketevan Bolashvili (GE), Isabel Mundry, Vladimir Tarnopolski (RUS), Alla Zagaykevych (UA) I Venues: Goethe Institutes / colleges of music in Tiflis (GE), Kiev (UA), Charkiw (UA) I P. I Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Moscow (RUS) I Haus zum Walfisch, Freiburg im Breisgau I

Schedule: 2 January – 25 July 2007

For over 15 years, the ensemble recherche has collaborated with the art and cultural scenes and institutions of higher education to establish new international cooperative ventures. Its efforts to develop new net works for musicians and composers from eastern Europe beyond the borders of the European Union are not motivated by the possibility of performing more concerts, but rather the opportunity to cre ate new constellations through international exchange. To achieve this goal, the ensemble has organized a series of seminars, instrumen tal courses, lectures, productions of world premieres, and concerts of 20 th and 21st-century music performed by young musicians in Tiflis, Kiev, Charkiw, Moscow and Freiburg im Breisgau, the home of the ensemble recherche. With its internationally renown musicians, this chamber ensemble has gained an outstanding reputation around the world for its commitment to performing and promoting New Music.

the gravestones of izbica Documentary film Directors: Wolfgang Schoen, Frank Gutermuth I Broadcaster: Südwestrundfunk I Date of broad cast: 2007

The Polish town of Izbica near Lublin was made into a ‹transit ghetto› by the SS in 1941. From there, tens of thousands of Jews were trans ported to the Majdanek and Sobibor death camps. Thousands of others were murdered right there in town by the Gestapo. Today, a ter rible reminder of the war still stands in Izbica — the former Gestapo prison built during the German occupation with grave stones from the Jewish cemetery. The documentary The Gravestones of Izbica will follow the planned return of the stones to Izbica’s Jewish cemetery. The stones, which were once desecrated by the Nazis, will form the foundation of a new memorial wall that will enclose the former Jew ish cemetery. This momentous event is being organized by Poland’s Jewish community, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Jewish Heritage and the Polish government.

sound bridge German-Polish exchange programme of contemporary string quartets

Artistic director: Klaus Hinrich Stahmer I Jury members: Michael Denhoff, Dirk Hewig, Arkadiusz Kubica (PL), Lud wig-Quartett, Siegfried Mauser, Krzysztof Meyer (PL), Peter Ruzicka, Reinhard Schulz, Silesian String Quartet (PL), Tadeusz Wielecki (PL) I Venue and schedule: Munich Col lege for Music and Theatre, 20 – 21 March 2007

Works of contemporary art reflect how a nation sees itself at the present. Therefore, multinational collaboration on contemporary compositions would be particularly suited to motivating young musi cians from various countries to become familiar with the unique char acteristics of other countries. This project hopes to motivate young German and Polish music students from German and Polish colleges of music to acquaint themselves more intensively with contemporary quartet compositions and rehearse them together. In order to prepare the students for a competition and award finalist concerts in Munich and Breslau, they will be invited to participate in a workshop led by composers and professional quartet players. The award winners of 2007 will then perform in concert at the largest Polish festival of con temporary art — Warsaw Autumn

where is lemberg? Multi-disciplinary exhibition on the history and future of Lemberg Project directors: Hermann Simon, Chana Schütz I Curators: Irene Stratenwerth, Ronald Hinrichs I Participants /artists: Jurj An druchowytsch, Yaroslaw Hrytsak, Wolodja Kaufmann, Iryna Kryororutcka, Olena Onufri, Sofia Onufri, Jurko Prochasko, Andrij Saljuk (all UA), and students from various colleges and universities in Lemberg I Exhibition design: Marcus Spiegel I Venues and schedule: Centrum Judaicum, Berlin, 2 September – 15 November 2007 I Lemberg / Lviv (UA), August – November 2008

In its long, eventful history, the Ukrainian city of Lemberg/Lviv has always been a melting pot for numerous ethnic groups, cultures and religions. At one time, the city was located in Poland and then became a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Later, it was occupied by the Russians and the Germans, and following World War II , fell under the control of the Soviet Union. For European Jews, Lemberg has al ways played an important role as the ‹Jerusalem of the East›. Some of its famous residents include the writers Joseph Roth, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Stanislaw Lem. Simon Wiesenthal and Martin Buber studied in Lemberg. However, its history as an intellectual-cul tural centre ended in World War II when practically all of Lemberg’s Jewish inhabitants were murdered. In recent years, Lviv has played a historically crucial role as one of the strongholds of the Ukrainian in dependence movement and the Orange Revolution. The exhibition and publication will examine the issues facing the city’s future and its handling of its cultural heritage as a place of European and especially Jewish cultural-historical significance. Developed together with art ists in Ukraine, the exhibition will open at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, followed by a showing in Lemberg / Lviv.

f il m and v ideo p rojects

The following projects in the area of Film and New Media have been granted funding at the recommenda tion of the Jury (10 th joint session in November 2006). You can find a complete overview of all the projects under the menu heading Artistic Areas / Film and New Media on our website www.kulturstiftung-bund.de.

maria schell Exhibition and film series Curators: Hans-Peter Reich mann, Maja Keppler I Participants / artists: Maximilian Schell (A), Oliver Schell, MarieTheres Kroetz, Veit Relin (A), Maria Furtwängler, Artur Brauner I Venues and schedule: Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt am Main, 31 January – 17 June 2007 I Schloss Wolfsberg (A), July – October 2007

Maria Schell was one of the most famous female movie stars of the 1950 s. In German post-war filmmaking, she embodied the ideal wom an alongside such stars as Dieter Borsche or O.W. Fischer. Her break through on the international stage came in 1954 with Helmut Käut ner’s The Last Bridge (Die letzte Brücke), for which she received the award for best leading actress at the Cannes Film Festival. In the fol lowing years, she worked with a number of famous directors such as Robert Siodmak, Wolfgang Staudte, René Clément and Luchino Vis conti.

Maria Schell’s life story paradigmatically reflects a chapter of West German media history. Her movies gained her international acclaim; she was often compared with actresses of world fame such as Ingrid Bergman. In the 1970 s and later, she primarily acted in German televi sion movies and series. The career of this great actress ran parallel to another development which saw the waning importance of cinema overshadowed by the rise of television. In presenting the life story of Maria Schell, this exhibition also highlights a significant era of West German cinematic and cultural history, as well as a historical perspec tive of the phenomenon of (German) stardom. The special exhibition at the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt will present the actress’s extensive works and personal memorabilia.

alexander kluge — the cinematic works DVD release

Artistic directors: Stefan Drössler, Rainer Stollmann I Artist: Alexander Kluge I Venues and schedule: 120 Goethe Institutes and their partners around the world, begins 15 February 2007

Alexander Kluge is not only an attorney, writer, television producer and media politician — above all, he is one of the most famous Ger man directors in the world. He played a decisive role as the driving force behind the establishment and development of New German Film. As a media politician, he fought for and advocated more lib eralization for television, which is one of the reasons why German television is so unique today. While Kluge’s written works have been thoroughly edited and are widely available, his cinematic works are not. On the occasion of Alexander Kluge’s 75 th birthday in 2007, the Goethe Institute and the Filmmuseum in Munich will jointly release a DVD edition of Kluge’s short and feature-length cinematic works and selected television works.

armenian film days Film series Artistic director: Fred Kelemen I Organization: Jörn Hagenloch I Participants / artists: Susanna Harut-yunian (ARM), Harutyun Khatchatryan (ARM), Atom Egoyan (CAN / ARM), Asinée Khanjian (CAN / ARM) Garegin Zakoan (ARM) and others I Venues and schedule: Kino Arsenal, Berlin, April – May 2007 I Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt am Main, June 2007 I Lux Kino, Halle (Saale), June 2007 I Kommunales Kino, Stuttgart, September 2007 Although Armenia regularly produces outstanding film directors, Armenian cinematography is practically unknown in Europe. Four German cinemas in Berlin, Frankfurt, Halle (Saale) and Stuttgart will host the Armenian Film Days, the first German retrospective of Armenian filmmaking. The programme will feature some of the ma jor themes in Armenian cinematography, such as the scars of geno cide, exile and emigration, and Armenia’s connections to Europe and European (cultural) history. The film programme will be accompa nied by audience discussions in Berlin. One of the invited guests will be Atom Egoyan, a famous director of the Armenian diaspora whose internationally acclaimed films address the complex issues of exile, immigration, identity and memory.

stan douglas Film/video installations and photo exhibition

Curators: Sean Rainbird (GB), Gudrun Inboden, Iris Dressler, Hans D. Christ I Artist: Stan Douglas (CDN) I Venues and schedule: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in cooperation with the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, 15 September 2007 6 January 2008, opens on 14 September 2007

Stan Douglas has been one of the most influential contemporary vid eo and media artists since the 1990 s. In his installations and large-scale ‹experimental ensembles›, he examines the mechanisms of new tech nologies and explores the modes of image production in film and tel evision. In his ‹spaces of experience›, he carefully integrates the viewer into an interplay of space, sound, light and moving pictures. The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the Württembergischer Kunstverein will co-organize Germany’s first comprehensive retrospective of this fa mous Canadian artist. In addition to photography, the exhibition will feature twelve central, multi-channel video installations and two new pieces (Film and Klatsassin ). The Stuttgart State Theatre will supple ment the exhibition with a programme based on Samuel Beckett, one of the major recurrent themes in Stan Douglas’s works.

videonale 11 International video art festival Artistic director: Georg Elben I Artists: Jeanne Faust, Christoph Girardet, Mischa Kuball, Hideyuki Tanaka (J), Jean-Gabriel Périot (F) and others I Venues and schedule: Kunstmuseum Bonn, 15 March – 14 April 2007 I Museum Inner Spaces, Poznañ (PL), October 2007 I Other venues in Korea and India are planned

The international video art festival Videonale 11 in the Kunstmuseum Bonn focuses on works that combine art, video and film. In addition to the international video art competition, the festival features an ac companying exhibition and podium discussions about current issues in the field of media art. The festival is widely regarded as one of the most important forums for cutting-edge video art in Germany and attracts young international audiences each year. Unlike the festivals of past years, the Videonale 11 will be extended by one month. The festival will include a praxis-oriented accompanying programme with workshops and seminars tailored to the interests of younger artists. In response to the frequent criticism of the ‹black box› atmosphere at video art shows, the Kunstmuseum Bonn will offer creative alterna tives to the classical museum exhibitions of video art.

by hanns zischler

journey to the interior

As the era of art cabinets and wunderkammer came to an end and their exhibits were reorganized into col lections based on scientific criteria, the arts were bereft of their position to interpret the world in terms of their own models of classification and perception. The fact that vast collections were hidden for years in the storerooms of the Berlin Museum of Natural History offered the perfect opportunity to present these priceless specimens to the greater public using an interactive medium. This interactive medium is an artis tic method of instruction targeted at school children, students of the natural sciences and humanities, libraries and museums. In the following, the project’s initiator Hanns Zischler gives us a taste of what lies hidden in the collections of the Berlin Museum of Natural History.

like a magician, the artist opens the curtain and reveals a gigantic cabinet of an exhibition arranged in the room behind him. The visitors walk through the room awestruck. Their curiosity appeals to the viewer of the painting. The Artist in His Studio is the title of this painting by the American colonial painter Charles Wilson Peale (1741 1821). The pic ture portrays the artist as a collector and scholar, and it is this ‹role› that exemplifies the essential intentions which are most significant for our current journey to the innermost collections at the Berlin Muse um of Natural History.

In the large halls of the Berlin Museum of Natural History, there are vast treasures (ca. 40 million pieces), most of which are catalogued and stored in glass cases, cylinders, closets, crates, archives and librar ies. Visitors to the museum are only allowed to see a fraction of these treasures displayed in the exhibition rooms — preserved animals, skeletons, minerals, fossils, etc. The entire collections, however, are informative cultural-historic documents that reflect how the methods of systematizing collections have changed over time as natural scientific discourse progressed. Furthermore, they clearly demonstrate to what extent they are embedded in intellectual history and the modern-day culture of knowledge. For example, how does a living organism be come a scientific, natural-historic collector’s item?

The tasks and areas of interest have also changed in the course of the museum’s history. In addition to purely those scientific interests which have always played an underlying role, the collections have also been greatly influenced by aesthetic issues and political interests. Conse quently, the pedagogical message of the exhibited collections have changed with the historic upheavals of the last one hundred and fifty years — imperialism, colonialism, world wars, etc. Although they might appear eternal and immutable at first glance, they take on a ‹life› of their own and a variety of meanings with our ever-changing ways of perceiving and representing the world.

The interactive medium that we’ve developed allows the viewer to na vigate the depths of these vast museum collections. It reveals their wealth, the changes and diverse historic, political and aesthetic refer ences, and indicates the direction the collections and exhibitions will take in the future. On closer inspection, the pieces turn out to be enor mously ‹over-determined› — the political, geographic and (scientific-) political circumstances and coincidences of their acquisition, the classification, taxidermic treatment, categorization, publication (and al so the disappearance and rediscovery) of the specimens — all this in formation is visibly and invisibly tied to each piece, making it an object that constantly oscillates between its purely ‹scientific› classification and its narrative extension.

Let me offer the example of a bird from the island of Kamtchatka (Sibe rian Pacific coast) to illustrate how detailed the interactive medium can examine a specimen. First of all, one should understand how the interactive medium works. An introductory film directs the user to the various areas of the museum like a map being slowly unrolled across a tabletop. Using this overview (interface), the user (reader, vis itor) can decide which objects he would like to learn more about. The user can allow his curiosity to lead him off the main path, branch in new directions, create his own links between text documents, illustra tions, interviews and free-floating (rotating) specimens. And he can return to the point he began at any time. Now, let us take a look at the ‹tufted puffin›.

The museum owns two specimens of the tufted puffin (Russian: toborok, meaning hatchet) Fratercula cirrhata The older specimen was first described by Peter Simon Pallas at the end of the 18th century. In 1804, the zoological taxonomist Carl Ludwig Willdenow sold the specimen that belonged to Pallas’ collection in Russia to the Royal Art Cabinet (which became the Royal Zoological Museum in 1810 and was re named the Berlin Museum of Natural History in 1889).

The second and more beautiful specimen was captured by Adelbert von Chamisso, who brought it to Berlin following a Russian ocean expedi tion on the Rurik (1815 1818).

Pallas’ bird is what we call a type specimen, i.e., being the first description of this species, it is the basis for all successive scientific literature about the species. Interestingly, the museum staff was unable to evacuate this specimen during the bombing in World War II from 1942 to 1944 Other pieces of Pallas’ collection were severely damaged by the war. By clicking on any of the words and names set in italics above, the inter active medium allows the user to head in a variety of different direc tions. Each term represents an ‹object› and can be used to form new links. The locations of the archived written and visual documentation are set in brackets []. The following is an example of the possible nar rative paths that branch off from the tufted puffin

Toborok (Aves — Neognaththae — Charadrriformes — Alcidae) — Siberian fauna — colour illustration in Zoographia Russo-Asiatica — history — bird col lection with ca. 3,000 type specimens — part of Pallas’ collection — [St. Peters burg Museum of Natural History; index of the hist. collections] — cultic and mythological significance for the indigenous Siberian peoples

Pallas — (history and genealogy of) Berlin naturalist — Russian traveller / Cather ine the Great / Siberian expeditions / ‹Zoographia Russo-Asiatica (1769)› — corre spondence [Historical Office]— monograph

Adelbert von Chamisso, German poet of French origin, naturalist — report of the circumnavigation of the world on the Russian ship ‹Rurik› — [oceanographic expe ditions of the 19 th cent. <Challenger>, <Valdivia> , etc..] — description of col lection — A. v. Chamisso’s estate.[Staatsbibliothek Preuß. Kulturbesitz]

War damage — evacuation plans / contemporary witnesses (Stresemann) — com memorative paper for the zoologist and Nazi opponent Prof. Walter Arndt — condi tion of the museum in 1945 (photos) —(post-)war history

Specimen — history of taxidermic techniques with examples — other conservation methods — scientific and exhibitory value — (interview with taxidermist)

System of classification — Willdenow — models of classification since Linné As we see, an exhibit like the tufted puffin leads us to a broad spectrum of other objects, classifications, people and institutions. The user can decide for himself whether he’d like to expand his ornithological knowledge or learn more about the history of the Berlin naturalists or the oceanographic expeditions around the world. The user can also peruse the various illustrations (drawings, photographs, films) or ex perience the dramatic consequences which the war had for the muse um. Frequently, it is the concealed, discrete history of an object that makes it come alive and demonstrates its true historical significance. The data trail that suddenly unfurls is a kind of narrative description of historical memory. Not only can the user learn about the ‹fate› of the exhibits, but also the (biographical) conditions that led the scien tists to collect them in the first place. By moving along these paths through the collections, the reader of the interactive medium will gain access to areas which could alter his view of the real world. The Jour ney to the Interior will not only provide users the opportunity to satisfy their immediate curiosity, but also see collecting as knowledge that can continuously generate new questions.

Last but not least, museums will immensely benefit from this project. The criteria for selecting suitable objects for the interactive medium also include questions regarding the future of museums which pos sess natural history collections. What perspectives does an applied collection history — collecting as knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge — open for the current image of the museum? To what ex tent is the museum itself — in the sense of an ensemble in which the predominant natural scientific discourses (in particular, that of evolu tionary biology) take place — in the position to lead the discussion with the humanities (scientific history, cultural science, art history) and philosophy regarding the ‹ultimate goal› of a museum?

Hanns Zischler has worked for years in the field of media archaeology and early film history. For the development and realization of the project Journey to the Interior, Zischler teamed up with Andreas Kratky, a specialist for creating and designing in terfaces and interactive media.

in collaboration with Andreas Kratky

airby nico bleutge

fold mountains, the view reaches far into the layers of the landscape, peaks and ridges flanks, banded, blanketed by air. the onset of snow

has whitened the ridge hollows, the first lines tightly compressed in the slopes, from the eyes gray expanses push apart the drifts, dispersed mist

from a thin cloud slightly beyond the edges which barely grow darker with density see a loosening of pale threads, storm traces, blending

into a darker layer, distance of fields, levels sinking into the twilight, almost disappearing the alluvial cone in the valley below, slowly, soon rising again

the gaze wanders to the slopes, always along the clearings past cliffs, cracks, washed-out craters enveloped in powdery light, which further up

grows clearer, becomes distinct once more near the top slag, traces of snow on the crest-lines almost bright before the staggered clouds

waves move in arcs, which expand, rush land-wards, tentatively touch down. between the tanks buoys push the water back, into the locks‘ opening

with threads of oil, finer branches. behind this layers of leaf swaying, along the canal trenches, more clearly spread out and just beyond the shore. bales of hay wait, mark the footpath

from the fields, moss and stalks, grass bends, twists almost merging with the moving air. pooling at the slope the wind already slips through the fences, post by post, and dust

flurries up from the fallow fields, expands, carried, softly towards the dam, towards the tracks. pebbles and gravel, for the streetcar, the cables horizontal to the grounds, criss-

crossing, in several rows near the slope. and again towards the river, from the fields, the air strokes, in small thrusts it moves the grass and from the nooks blows

in the glumes, they hesitate, cling briefly to the lock‘s wall and then slide down, far into the water, where the waves change their direction

village coast, low water level on the walls of tar and cement. light sinks, layers of air wander about in the fields, the slight scent of winter

dissolves more with each movement, on the grounds between the docks sounds collect, the simple rhythm of hard blows, bolts, pneumatic drills

tug-boats in the current‘s pull produced by the propellers. pushed away by waves mist rises on the quay wall, the shadings disappear

as the tide rises the view breaks its bond, krill tracings, a few streaks are sufficient to find the way through the basins, defunct switch yards

grass, which reaches the warehouses, unevenly lit set into the stone of the traffic ring, the first trade buildings direct the gaze to the cables, urge to exploration

in the air. only in the background do block silhouettes appear sleepy housing estates with TV antennas and wind the distance difficult to determine

dense still fanned by light (as if a street net were stretched over it) these roofs which rise above the gardens can hardly be missed, corrugated iron, almost grown-over

with hanging ivy, bleached-out shrubs. at the entrance the fingers move slightly left, the colony borders leveled grounds, while to the right, on

an adjoining path, the first shadows appear. smoke hovers in the pathways, obscures the paving stones, in piles planks hang in the air, varnished wood comes

further on, the summer homes, treated with lime, self-sawed pipes from the wall, in front of this a shimmering swishing, an exchange of heat takes place, the gliding

of fine matter, the calloused fingers draw you onto the pathways with swept borders, towards the embankments the vegetation. weed furrows, fresh terraces of grass the pits of water darken. only the air pumps and the current flows on through the gardens, the lights on the posts, are already burning

terrycloth you were ungrateful, said the voice said no sound and pressed itself closer against the body, the skin, all fuzzy and cold the hand loose, the false teeth loose the stench a wall, worn down by water, not enough, the foot stretched back, arched away I don’t know what I was thinking, but I saw streaks down the window, the light thinning, didn’t see where the eyes meet and the knees the sound of a zipper, I always keep calm when it gets crazy, almost purified, the arms, hands lying at attention. it doesn’t help to tremble, wail put an iron to your chest. Sandblasters peeled away my back, made the joints crack and the feeling had flown away like a little bird inside, reeling for a moment, lurching, fluttering, then dropping. just touching, fingers clutching the terrycloth, lying still, the scent of sweat, hair stuck to my face, I dropped into a deep sleep later I woke to a drip, penetrated the head no sound, no moisture, the hands now still. air drifted from the window, mildly, almost reliably

then, around noontime, the first sounds from the street float up, hands patting down clothing, children’s chatter. In the space between the buildings, the movement is more leisurely. patches wander, the air stirs the eyes follow the overhang along the garages. wooden fences narrow strips of nettles, in the background, gleaming prefab facades. suddenly the wind rises, builds, blows sand into the swathes on the hills bright, with signs marking the edges right up to the safety zone that stretches across the plains, to the checkpoints, barely visible. only wire fences and chainlinked expanses, the blades of a wind turbine, beating above the rooftops

early snow, the sea light squeezes in the horizon but at the edges you can hear it, dripping and sounds of breathing, the creaking window pane under the pressure of a wrinkly fingertip

the twitching of the leaves when it begins to rain, unnoticed for a slightly tense moment then, suddenly the eyes pace back and forth

the day curled itself up, the first really bright day; now darkness blankets the ground and the houses hold the snow

catching hold of the memory just beyond the white-edged rooftops voices, noises in the background of stories which briefly flare before joining the twilight

the ground is bare, barely visible beneath the air, the edges shift from day to day

The German Literary Fund e.V. has awarded the Kranichsteiner Literary Prize to outstanding German writers since 1983. In 2003, the association established the Kranichsteiner Literary Award of Sponsorship specially aimed to support writers who are younger than 35. The Award of Sponsorship includes prize money of 5000 euros. Situated in Darmstadt, the German Literary Fund e.V. supports contemporary German language litera ture and focuses its efforts to support writers and literary promotion, e.g., work grants, project funding, transla tions and symposiums. The Federal Cultural Foundation has supported the German Literary Fund e.V. since 2004, increasing its annual budget by one million euros each year. www.deutscher literaturfonds.de

Nico Bleutge was born in Munich in 1972. From 1993 to 1998, he studied Modern German Literature, General Rhetoric and Philosophy at the University of Tübingen. Bleutge is a poet and literary critic for several national newspapers. His poems have been published in numerous literary magazines, including Sinn und Form. In 2001, he was awarded the literaturWERKstatt Berlin open mike prize, and in 2003, the Wolfgang Weyrauch Promotion Prize ‹Literarischer März›. In 2006, he received the Anna Seghers Award and the Kranichsteiner Literary Award of Sponsorship by the German Literary Fund e.V. His most recent volume of poems, klare konturen, was published by C H Beck in Munich in 2006 Nico Bleutge lives in Tübingen.

Translated by Rebecca Garron

Translated by Robert Brambeer

shrinking cities on world tour from 2007 to 2008

Following the incredible success of the two Shrinking Cities exhi bitions in Berlin, Halle and Leipzig, the exhibitions will be shown at ten more venues around the world, the most recent of which include the 10th International Architectural Biennial in Venice, Rousse (Bulgaria), New York and Tokyo. The design of the exhi bition is individualized to fit each venue and additional activities and event programmes are organized together with local part ners. Exhibition venues in 2007 and 2008: USA , Detroit: Cran brook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills / Museum of Contempo rary Art Detroit (MOCAD ), 3 Feb. – 2 Apr. 2007. Great Britain, Liverpool: summer 2007. Germany, Saarbrücken: E-Werk, au tumn 2007; Ruhr region: Dortmund and other venues, autumn 2007; Frankfurt/Main: German Museum of Architecture in Frankfurt (DAM), Nov. 2007 – Jan. 2008. Russian Federation, St. Petersburg: Pro Arte Institute in cooperation with the St. Pe tersburg State Museum of History, spring 2008 For more information, visit: www.shrinkingcities.com

dance germany

The Federal Cultural Foundation is funding the Dance Plan Ger many’s Internet portal www.dance-germany.org, a networking platform for the entire German professional dance scene which has been online since 20 April 2006. The Internet portal relies on the participation of the dance artists who enter and update their own personal data. Each entry can be personally designed to in clude descriptions, photos and third-party links. Dance Germa ny is unique in that it automatically interlinks all information about upcoming events, dance artists and institutions. For ex ample, the announcement of an upcoming performance is linked to detailed venue data, ticket reservation links and other related dates. An internal search engine can be used to search the entire data bank. Furthermore, the free-access interface allows users to integrate the data into other websites.

www.dance-germany.org

home game funds seven new projects

The home game fund was initiated by the Federal Cultural Foun dation to support projects which strengthen the relationship be tween theatres and their cities and attract new audiences. The themes of the theatre projects are based on research done in the city beforehand and are carried out together with municipal co operative partners. In January 2007, the panel of experts reviewed the second round of applications and selected seven new projects at the following theatres: Schauspiel Stuttgart, Nationaltheater Mannheim, Theater an der Parkaue Berlin, Westfälische Kam merspiele Paderborn, Puppentheater der Stadt Magdeburg, Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Stadttheater Konstanz. The home game theatre fund is currently funding 22 projects. The next ap plication deadline is 31 October 2007

For more information about the home game fund, visit: www.kulturstiftung-bund.de

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new funding

regions at the world cinema fund Together with Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, the World Cinema Fund plans to expand its regional funding efforts to include Caucasus and Southeast Asia starting in August 2007 According to the directors of the World Cinema Fund, Sonja Heinen and Vincenzo Bugno, ‹Georgia has always been a coun try with a rich cinematic tradition. And thanks to the digital rev olution, there are many young directors who are actively making films in Southeast Asia. There are numerous producers here in Germany who would just love to cooperate with such talented filmmakers from these countries.› The World Cinema Fund, which is funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation, presented El Otro/ The Other by Ariel Rotter at this year’s Berlinale for which it won several prizes. The Argentinean film was awarded the Jury Grand Prix — Silver Bear, and the leading actor Julio Chavez won a Silver Bear for Best Actor. For more information, visit: www.berlinale.de

fassbinder’s berlin alexanderplatz: re-mastered «Fassbinder’s greatest and most beautiful, terrifying and stun ning, wild and yet most disciplined work.» This is what the Ger man newspaper ZEIT had to say about Berlin Alexanderplatz when it was first televised by the ARD in 1980. However, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film adaptation of Alfred Döblin’s novel of the same name divided Germany’s movie critics into two camps — those who loved it, and those who severely criticized it because of the poor quality of the televised images. The television tech nology of the time was simply unable to render the artistic nu ances of Fassbinder’s light dramaturgy. The Federal Cultural Foundation together with the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foun dation and Bavaria Film International have produced a com pletely re-mastered digital version of the 15-hour movie. The world premiere of this masterpiece was presented at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2007. Following its gala premiere at the Admiralspalast, the movie set a new record at the Volksbühne: more than 15 hours long, Fassbinder’s Alexander platz was the longest film ever shown at the Berlinale.

For more information, visit: www.fassbinderfoundation.de

premiere and nationwide launch of the short film reel do what you want

Eleven short films have been selected as the winners of the short film competition Do What You Want. The movies, documenta ries, animated features and short experimental films provide sur prising insights into the complex issue of work. The films show alternative styles of living, utopian visions of other universes of labour, and the absurdity of economic market laws. The film BUS by Jens Schillmöller and Lale Nalpantoglu, the only Ger man short film to compete at the Berlinale short film competi tion, will now premiere together with the other films at the Kino Babylon:Mitte in Berlin on 29 March 2007. The film reel will be gin a nationwide cinema tour beginning on 1 May 2007

For more information, visit: www.machdochwasduwillst.org

news from the future of labour fund

In summer 2006, this application-based fund called for project proposals which address changes in the working world. Thir teen projects were granted funding. One of the important crite ria for the selection process was to provide a convincing promo tional concept that appealed to a variety of audiences, including those without a connection to culture. Below are two projects which we are currently funding. For more information, visit: www.kulturstiftung-bund.de

battle on the car park

Built in the 1960s, the Neues Zentrum Kreuzberg (NKZ ) in Ber lin was supposed to become a social urban utopia with 300 inex pensive, high-end apartments, also for citizens of Turkish na tionality, an open-air stage, terrace cafes and hanging gardens. Today, with one of the highest unemployment rates in Berlin, Kreuzberg and the NKZ have come to represent poverty and so cial isolation. From 10 to 15 July 2007, the project Battle on the Car Park will use the vacant multi-storey car park at the housing area as its venue. The artist group Pony Pedro will stage a bazaar with 40 long-term unemployed people. Each participant will be allotted one space on the car park as ‹commercial property› and will be provided with starting capital to establish a new, tempo rary business. In addition to the 40 new businesses, the project organizers also plan to install a roof-top garden, personal vege table gardens and an arbour bar on the top level of the car park, open to visitors, residents and the bazaar merchants. The pro gramme will be rounded off with a series of evening events, such as boxing matches, battles of the bands and discussions. Through intensification, exaggeration and irritation, the project intends to examine the conventional models of starting one’s own busi ness and explore the future viability of new, informal markets at the poverty line.

work fiction

Between 5 October 2007 and 5 January 2008, the Kunstverein Wolfsburg will host an exhibition titled Work Fiction which will present historic and contemporary artistic positions depicting work in the fine arts, film and pop culture. Various futuristic fan tasies will be condensed into ten thesis-like visions which will be displayed at the association as room units designed by one or more artists. These visions include the concept of permanent mobility, human-machine entities (cyborgs) and the eradication of money. The exhibition will be accompanied by science fiction films, music videos and animation.

news from the Fund to Strengthen Citizen Involvement in the New Länder

In our last issue, we published a report about three projects sup ported by the Fund to Strengthen Citizen Involvement in the New Länder. In the following, we briefly describe two projects currently receiving funding. For more information about the New Länder Fund, visit: www.kulturstiftung-bund.de

cultural cosmos of müritzsee, lärz

our website

The Federal Cultural Foundation offers an extensive, bilingual website where you can access detailed information about the Foundation’s activities, responsibilities, funded projects, pro grammes and much more. Visit us at: www.kulturstiftung-bund.de.

On the former Russian military airfield Lärz in the middle of the Mecklenburg Lakeland, the Cultural Cosmos of Müritzsee As soc. held its first international theatre and performance festival at.tension in summer 2006. With funding provided by the New Länder Fund, audiences had the chance to enjoy a three-day festi val featuring 15 productions and approx. 30 performances, which included dance theatre, artistic performance, open air events, po litical satire, installations and music performances. The grounds used by Cultural Cosmos with its bunkered hangar and old land ing strip offer unique venues for artistic productions and are sure to make the second annual at.tension festival from 14 to 16 Sep tember 2007 just as extraordinary.

stelzen festival near reuth

In 1992, the Thuringian village of Stelzen (near Reuth) estab lished a three-day festival of classical music which quickly be came known for its remarkable originality and quality. Mean while, close to 10,000 visitors travel to Stelzen each year to enjoy the impressive mix of symphonic concerts, chamber music, jazz, experimental and ancient music, exhibitions and theatre performances. The villagers organize practically the entire festival by themselves (including the logistics, catering, accommodation of musicians and guests, etc.). To show appreciation and strengthen this citizen involvement, the New Länder Fund will help finance a symphonic birthday concert and opera performance marking the 15th anniversary of the festival (29 June – 1 July 2007). A por tion of the funding will support the association’s goal of making Stelzen a musical meeting place all year round.

Chair of the Board of Trustees representing the Federal Foreign Office representing the Federal Ministry of Finance representing the German Bundestag

representing the German Länder representing the German Municipalities

Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Cultural Foundation of German States representing the fields of art and culture Imprint

german federal cultural foundation

board of trustees

The Board of Trustees is responsible for making final decisions concerning the general focus of the Founda tion’s activities, its funding priorities and organizational structure. The 14-member board reflects the politi cal levels which were integral to the Foundation’s establishment. All the trustees are appointed for a five-year term. The entire board will be newly appointed during the first half of 2007. The names of several new mem bers were not known at the time of printing.

Bernd Neumann

Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery and Commissioner for Cultural and Media Affairs Georg Boomgarden State Secretary, Federal Foreign Office Dr. Barbara Hendricks Parliamentary State Secretary, Federal Ministry of Finance Dr. Norbert Lammert President of the German Bundestag Wolfgang Thierse Vice President of the German Bundestag Hans-Joachim Otto Chairman of the Parliamentary Cultural Committee Dr.Valentin Gramlich State Secretary, Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of Saxony-Anhalt Prof. Dr. Joachim Hofmann-Göttig State Secretary, Ministry of Science, Continuing Education, Research and Culture of Rhineland-Palatinate Klaus Hebborn Councillor for Education, Culture and Sports, German Association of Cities Uwe Lübking Councillor, German Association of Cities Dr. Christian Wulff Minister-President of Lower Saxony TBA TBA TBA

jury

The Jury is comprised of leading experts from various artistic fields and is responsible for reviewing the ap plications for General Project Funding.

Prof. Dr. Rosmarie Beier-de Haan German Historical Museum, Berlin Prof. Dr. Heinrich Dilly Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg Dr. Ulrike Groos Artistic Director of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf Dr. Christoph Heinrich Director of the Galerie der Gegenwartskunst, Hamburg Prof. Ulrich Khuon General Director of the Thalia Theater, Hamburg Dr. Petra Lewey Director of the Städtische Kunstsammlungen Zwickau Helge Malchow Manager of the publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne Christian Petzold Filmmaker, Berlin Thorsten Schilling Federal Centre for Political Education, Bonn Steffen Schleiermacher Composer, Pianist, Leipzig Ilona Schmiel Artistic Director of the Beethoven Festival, Bonn

advisory committee

The Advisory Committee makes recommendations concerning the thematic focus of the Foundation’s ac tivities. The committee is comprised of leading figures in the arts, culture, business, academics and politics.

Dr. Christian Bode Secretary General of the DAAD Jens Cording President of the Society for Contemporary Music Prof. Dr. Max Fuchs Chairman of the German Arts Council Prof. Dr. Jutta Limbach President of the Goethe-Institut Dr. Michael Eissenhauer President of the Association of German Museums Martin Maria Krüger President of the German Music Council Dr. Oliver Scheytt President of the Society for Cultural Policy and Dept. Head for Cultural Affairs of Essen Johano Strasser President of the German P.E.N. Center Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen Secretary General of the Cultural Foundation of German States Frank Werneke Deputy Chairman of the ver.di labour union Prof. Dr. Clemens Börsig Chairman of the Cultural Committee of German Business with the BDI e.V. Prof. Klaus Zehelein President of the German Theatre Association

executive board

Hortensia Völckers Artistic Director Alexander Farenholtz Administrative Director

the team

Assistant to the Executive Board

Lavinia Francke Legal Department Ferdinand von Saint André Press and Public Relations Friederike Tappe-Hornbostel [dept. head] / Tinatin Eppmann / Julia Mai / Christoph Sauerbrey / Arite Studier General Project Funding Kirsten Haß [dept. head] / Bärbel Hejkal Programme Department Dorit von Derschau / Dr. Holger Kube Ventura / Antonia Lahmé / Dr. Lutz Nitsche Uta Schnell / Eva Maria Gauß [asst. to New Länder Fund]

Administration

Steffen Schille / Steffen Rothe / Kristin Salomon / Tino Sattler Contributions and Controlling Anja Petzold / Ines Deák / Susanne Dressler / Marcel Gärtner / Andreas Heimann Berit Ichite / Lars-Peter Jakob / Berit Koch / Fabian Märtin Secretary’s Office

Beatrix Kluge / Beate Ollesch [Berlin office] / Christine Werner

Published by Kulturstiftung des Bundes Franckeplatz 1 06110 Halle an der Saale Tel +49 [0] 345‒2997 0 Fax +49 [0] 345‒2997 333 info@kulturstiftung-bund.de www.kulturstiftung-bund.de Executive Board Hortensia Völckers, Alexander Farenholtz [responsible for the content]

Editor Friederike Tappe-Hornbostel

Ass. Editor Tinatin Eppmann

Translator Robert Brambeer, Rebecca Garron (Polish Miracles, Taking Memory to the Streets)

Image sources Reprinted with the kind permission of Suhrkamp Verlags, Frankfurt am Main

Design cyan Production hausstætter herstellung

Circulation 8.000

Date of issue 19 Feb. 2007

By-lined contributions do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editor. © Kulturstiftung des Bundes — All rights reserved. Reproduction in part or whole without prior consent from the Federal Cultural Founda tion is strictly prohibited.

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